ummuMBmiirw  inadiwiBB 


nuiiniiiiniim.i  i  niiiminiin'iniiiii  iniwiwirmiiwuiio 


versicie 


-i  e  r  o  e 


/r\T> 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 

AT  CHAPEL  HILL 

1 

ENDOWED  BY  THE 

DLVLECTIC  AND  PHILANTHROPIC 

SOCIETIES 

UNIVERSITY  OF  N.  C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


00013080863 


This  book  is  due  at  the  WALTER  R.  DAVIS  LIBRARY  on 
the  last  date  stamped  under  "Date  Due."  If  not  on  hold  it 
may  be  renewed  by  bringing  it  to  the  library. 


DATE 
DUE 


RET. 


KB  08  t 


i^ 


OCT  1  51991 


CARFig!  (.:l:-l: 


JUL 


3J121 


OCT  3  1  ' 


m- 


CLU-!MSJ 


Fofm  No.  513, 
Rev.  1184 


DATE 
DUE 


RET. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2011  with  funding  from 

University  of  North  Carolina  at  Chapel  Hill 


http://www.archive.org/details/onheroesheroworscarl 


THOMAS    CARLYLE 

From  the  portrait  by  J.  A.  McNeill  Whistler 


a^lie  UitJcriStDe  iLicerature  Series;       '«-,-, 

\^^1 

ON  HEROES,  HERO-WORSHIP, 

AND 

THE  HEROIC  IN  HISTORY 

BY 

THOMAS  CARLYLE 

EDITED  FOR   STUDY 

BY 

JOHN  CHESTER  ADAMS,  Ph.  D. 

INSTEUCTOB  IN   ENGLISH  IN  YAXK  UNIVEBSITY 


c 


THE  LIBRARY 

THEUWVERSm'  OF  NORTH  CAROLINA 

AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

Boston  :  4  Park  Street ;  New  York :  85  Fifth  Avenae 
Chicago:  378-388  Wabash  Avenue 

d)E  fiiUEcjJiiJE  prEjSjj  Cambridge 


COFTIUGHT  I9C7  BY  HOUGHTON",  MIFFLIN  AXD  COMPANT 
M.l.   RIGHTS  RESERVED 


PREFATORY  XOTE 

This  edition  of  "  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship  "  is  in- 
tended for  the  beginner,  not  the  experienced  Carlylean. 
It  is  important,  therefore,  that  he  should  have  all  the 
time  available  to  study  Carlyle's  thought  and  style, 
and  be  relieved  of  the  need  of  hunting  over  diction- 
aries and  encyclopedias  for  mere  information.  An  at- 
tempt has  been  m^ade  in  the  footnotes  to  supply  such 
mechanical  apparatus  as  would  be  useful  to  a  student 
of  the  last  years  in  the  High  School  or  of  Freshman 
or  Sophomore  year  in  college  in  gaining  a  verbal 
understanding  of  the  text.  The  "  Additional  Xotes  " 
contain  suggestions  for  his  more  deliberate  and  care- 
ful study  of  Carlyle's  teaching.  The  editor  has  not 
felt  any  obligation  to  stand  over  the  author  with  a  rod 
of  correction  for  the  occasional  petty  slips  of  his  mem- 
ory or  the  imperfect  scholarship  of  his  generation ; 
for  the  value  of  the  book  consists  primarily  in  its 
power  to  stimulate  mind  and  heart  and  soul,  rather 
than  in  the  amount  of  historical  or  other  knowledge 
that  one  may  gather  from  it. 

The  text  is  that  of  the  Library  Edition  of  Carlyle's 
works,  London,  1869-71,  of  which  the  People's  Edi- 
tion, the  only  later  one  issued  during  Carlyle's  life, 
was  a  cheap  reprint. 


CONTENTS 

Prefatory  Note iii 

Introduction 

I.   Lif  e  of  Carlyle vii 

II.   The  Four  Courses  of  Lectures  and  the  Publication  of 

Heroes  and  Hero-Worship xxi 

III.  Carlyle's  Style  in  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship  .     .     .      xxviii 

IV.  Carlyle's  Teachings  in  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship  .     .  xxxii 
Heroes  and  Hero-Worship 

Lecture  I.    The   Hero   as   Divinity.     Odin.     Paganism : 

Scandinavian  Mythology 1 

Lecture  II.    The  Hero  as  Prophet.     Mahomet :   Islam     .  58 

Lecture  III.    The  Hero  as  Poet.     Dante ;  Shakspeare     .  107 
Lecture  IV.    The  Hero  as  Priest.    Luther ;  Reformation : 

Knox ;  Puritanism 162 

Lecture  V.    The  Hero  as  Man  of  Letters.    Johnson,  Rous- 
seau, Bums 215 

Lecture  VI.    The  Hero  as  King.     Cromwell,  Napoleon : 

Modern  Revolutionism 272 

Carlyle's  Summary 339 

Additional  Notes,  Comments,  and  Suggestions  for  Study  349 

Bibliography  for  Outside  Reading 367 

Suggestions  for  Teaching 369 

Carlyle's  Index 373 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Thomas  Carlyle Frontispiece 

From  the  portrait  by  J.  A.  McNeill  Whistler 

Dante  Alighieri 118 

Tlie  Bargello  Portrait,  drawn  by  Mr.  Seymour  Kirhip  before  it  was 
retouched  by  Marini 

Samuel  Johnson 248 

From  the  painting  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds 

Oliver  Cromwell 334 

From  the  painting  by  Robert  Walker,  in  the  Collection  of  the  Earl  of 
Sandwich,  Hinchingbrooke,  England. 


INTRODUCTION 


LIFE  OF  CARLTLE 


In  a  small  country  village  in  southwestern  Scotland, 
toward  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  there 
grew  up  five  brothers,  who  by  their  character  and  occu- 
pation earned  the  title  of  the  "  five  fighting  masons," 
—  "a  curious  sample  o'  folks,  pithy,  bitter-speaking 
bodies,  and  awful  fighters."  The  second  of  these  con- 
cerns us  here,  James  Carlyle,  a  steady,  abstemious, 
self-reliant,  hard-working,  thorough-working,  devout- 
minded  man,  living  in  a  house  built  by  his  own  hands. 
A  stone  bridge  of  his  building  was  regarded  with 
pride  by  his  famous  son  as  a  more  honorable  work 
than  any  of  his  own  books.  When  James  Carlyle 
died  in  1832,  his  son  Thomas,  unable  to  return  home 
to  see  his  burial,  found  consolation  in  writing  down 
"  Reminiscences  "  of  him  :  "  In  several  respects  I  con- 
sider my  father  as  one  of  the  most  interesting  men  I 
have  known,  ...  of  perhaps  the  very  largest  natural 
endowment  of  any  it  has  been  my  lot  to  converse  with. 
None  of  you  will  ever  forget  that  bold  glowing  style  of 
his,  flowing  free  from  his  untutored  soul,  full  of  meta- 
phors (though  he  knew  not  what  a  metaphor  was), 
with  all  manner  of  potent  words.  Nothing  did  I  ever 
hear  him  imdertake  to  render  visible  which  did  not 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

become  almost  ocularly  so.  Emphatic  I  have  heard 
him  beyond  all  men.  .  .  .  His  words  were  like  sharp 
arrows  that  smote  into  the  very  heart.  .  .  .  Let  me 
write  my  books  as  he  built  his  houses,  and  walk  as 
blamelessly  through  this  shadow  world.  .  .  .  We  all 
had  to  complain  that  we  durst  not  freely  love  him.  .  .  . 
TiU  late  years  I  was  ever  more  or  less  awed  and  chilled 
by  him." 

His  wife  was  of  a  more  tender,  approachable  nature. 
She  it  was  that  taught  Tom  at  an  early  age  to  read, 
though  her  own  equipment  did  not  enable  her  to  go 
far  with  him.  When  he  grew  up  she  learned  to  write 
that  she  might  keep  better  in  touch  with  him  in  his 
absence.  To  her  in  later  years  he  wrote  constantly  of 
his  doings  and  thinkings.  She  encouraged  him  by  her 
confidence  in  his  powers,  and  studied  his  books  with 
loving  pride  in  his  accomplishment.  And  as  long  as 
she  lived  it  was  one  of  his  chiefest  joys  to  return  from 
the  society  of  the  distinguished  literary  world  to  the 
talk  of  her  "  with  whom  alone  my  heart  played  fi'eely," 
as  they  smoked  their  pipes  together  by  the  hearth 
in  simple  peasant  fashion. 

Of  James  Carlyle  and  Margaret  Aitken,  his  wife, 
Thomas  was  the  eldest  child,  born  December  4,  1795, 
in  the  village  of  Ecclefechan  in  Dumfriessliire.  His 
education  began  early  in  the  home.  To  the  reading 
taught  him  by  his  mother,  the  father  added  a  scanty 
supply  of  arithmetic.  At  the  age  of  five  he  began  to 
attend  school.  At  seven  he  was  pronounced  "  com- 
plete in  English," —  in  some  ways  almost  a  foreign 
tongue  to  the  Annandale  peasant  boy.  Two  years 
later  he  added  further  to  his  knowledge,  if  not  to  his 


LIFE    OF   CARLYLE  ix 

happiness,  by  being  sent  to  the  Annan  Grammar 
School  six  miles  away,  to  be  prepared  for  the  Univer- 
sity. How  Carlyle  fared  there  is  reflected  in  "  Sartor 
Resartus"  ^  in  the  account  of  Teufelsdrockh's  experi- 
ences at  the  Hinterschlag  Gymnasium :  "  My  Teachers 
were  hide-bound  Pedants,  without  knowledge  of  man's 
nature,  or  of  boy's ;  or  of  aught  save  their  lexicons 
and  quarterly  account-books.  Innumerable  dead  Voca- 
bles (no  dead  Language,  for  they  themselves  knew 
no  Language)  they  crammed  into  us,  and  called  it 
fostering  the  growth  of  mind.  .  .  .  The  Professors  knew 
syntax  enough  ;  and  of  the  human  soul  thus  much : 
that  it  had  a  faculty  called  Memory,  and  could  be 
aeted-on  through  the  muscular  integument  by  the  ap- 
pliance of  birch-rods." 

In  November,  1809,  Carlyle  walked  the  eighty  and 
odd  miles  across  the  country  to  Edinburgh  University. 
His  career  there  was  not  distinguished,  except  perhaps 
inwardly,  by  a  more  than  usually  strenuous  confhct 
of  irrepressible  personality  with  institutional  conven- 
tions. "  Had  you,  anywhere  in  Grim  Tartary,"  says 
Teufelsdrockh,2  "  walled-in  a  square  enclosure ;  fur- 
nished it  with  a  small,  ill- chosen  Library  ;  and  then 
turned  loose  into  it  eleven-hundred  Christian  striplings, 
to  tumble  about  as  they  listed,  from  three  to  seven 
years  :  certain  persons,  under  the  title  of  Professors, 
being  stationed  at  the  gates,  to  declare  aloud  that  it 
was  a  University,  and  exact  considerable  admission- 
fees,  —  you  had,  not  indeed  in  mechanical  structure,  yet 
in  spirit  and  result,  some  imperfect  resemblance  of 
our  High  Seminary."  "  What  I  have  found  the  Uni- 
»  II,  ui.  2  Ibid. 


X-  INTRODUCTION 

versity  did  for  me,  was  that  it  taught  me  to  read  in 
various  languages  and  various  sciences,  so  that  I  could 
go  into  the  books  that  treated  of  these  things,  and  try 
anything  I  wanted  to  make  myself  master  of  gradually, 
as  I  found  it  suit  me."  ^  He  was  more  than  ordinarily 
proficient  in  mathematics,  but  the  University  gave 
him  little  Latin  and  less  Greek.  For  two  years  after 
his  departure  (in  1814),  without  a  degree,  he  was 
mathematical  tutor  at  Annan,  and  the  following  two 
years  at  Kirkcaldy.  The  teaching  had  been  under- 
taken as  a  temporary  means  of  support  until  he 
should  be  ready  for  ordination  as  a  minister  of  the 
Kirk  of  Scotland,  the  goal  of  his  parents'  ambition 
for  him.  But  theological  uncertainties  caused  him  to 
feel  the  impossibility  of  ever  preaching  from  a  pulpit, 
—  though  preacher  he  was  to  the  end  of  his  days. 
The  change  was  a  bitter  disappointment  to  his  father 
and  mother  and  a  bitter  grief  to  himseK  for  their 
sakes. 

Convinced  that  "  it  were  better  to  perish  than  to 
continue  school-mastering,"  in  1818  he  returned  to  Ed- 
inburgh to  attend  law  lectures.  The  law  soon  showed 
itself  no  more  satisfactory  than  other  professions ;  and 
while  he  supported  himself  by  teaching  private  pupils 
and  writing  articles,  distinguished  by  no  trace  of  indi- 
viduality of  thought  or  style,  for  the  "  Edinburgh  Ency- 
clopedia," he  dragged  through  the  three  most  wretched 
years  of  his  life.  His  frugal  and  irregular  living  in 
university  days,  in  an  attempt  to  spare  as  much  as  pos- 
sible the  family  supply  of  oatmeal,  had  rendered  him 
a  victim  to  unutterable  torments  of  dyspepsia:  "A 
^  Inaugural  Address,  On  the  Choice  of  Books. 


LIFE  OF  CARLYLE  xi 

rat  was  gnawing  at  the  pit  of  my  stomach."  To  this 
continual  agony  was  added  "  eating  of  the  heart,  mis- 
givings as  to  whether  there  shall  be  presently  anything 
else  to  eat,  disappointment  of  the  nearest  and  dear- 
est as  to  the  hoped-for  entrance  on  the  ministry,  and 
steadily-growing  disappointment  of  self — above  all, 
wanderings  through  mazes  of  doubt,  perpetual  question- 
ings unanswered."  A  pretty  complete  list  of  woes! 
Carlyle  had  been  brought  up  in  the  strict  Scotch  Cal- 
vinistic  faith  and  practice  :  the  pi-actice  he  held  to  al- 
ways, the  faith  was  struggling  for  existence.  His  wide 
reading  and  thinking  had  opened  to  him  visions  of 
truth  far  wider  than  were  possible  to  the  Ecclefechan 
stone-mason  and  his  wife.  He  felt  himself  drifting 
toward  materialism,  —  a  belief,  or  "  no-belief,"  which 
he  had  been  taught  to  consider  tenable  only  by  one 
possessed  of  the  Devil,  and  of  which  he  continued  to 
the  end  to  hold  essentially  the  same  opinion.  It  was 
the  eompletest  upheaval  of  his  inmost  nature,  and  he 
suffered  as  a  man  suffers  only  when  the  deepest  feel- 
ings of  his  heart  are  torn  up  by  the  roots.  How,  in 
June,  1821,  he  won  the  decisive  battle  of  the  campaign 
against  the  "  Everlasting  No  "  is  told  in  the  chapter 
so  entitled  in  "  Sartor  Resartus."  His  great  helper  in  the 
struggle  was  Goethe,  to  whom  he  wrote,  "  It  can  never 
be  forgotten  that  to  you  I  owe  the  all-precious  know- 
ledge and  experience  that  Reverence  is  still  possible  : 
that  instead  of  conjecturing  and  denying,  I  can  again 
believe  and  know."  Financial  aid  came  to  him  succes- 
sively by  his  appointment  as  a  tutor  in  a  wealthy  fam- 
ily, and  by  the  success  of  his  "  Life  of  SchiUer  "  and  his 
translation  of  "  Wilhelm  Meister  ;  "  but  the  dyspepsia 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

clung  closer  than  a  brother  for  the  rest  of  his  life, 
though  relenting  a  little  after  his  eightieth  year. 

In  June,  1821,  Carlyle  had  met  Miss  Jane  Baillie 
Welsh  (born  1801).  Her  father  was  a  successful  phy- 
sician of  the  town  of  Haddington.  He  alone,  and  not 
always  he,  could  control  the  merry,  mocking,  keen- 
witted, and  sometimes  shar}>tongued  maid  with  raven 
locks  and  sparkling  black  eyes.  He  died  in  1819. 
Her  mother  was  of  the  sort  excellently  qualified  for 
spoiling  such  a  daughter.  From  the  first  there  was  no 
doubt  of  Jane  Welsh's  unusual  intellectual  gifts.  At 
the  age  of  ten  her  admiration  for  the  heroes  of  ancient 
Rome  —  she  had  been  reading  Vergil  —  led  her  to 
abjure  her  dolls,  which  were  surrendered  to  the  flames  in 
humble  imitation  of  Dido  of  Carthage.  Her  literary 
tastes  and  aspirations  formed  a  strong  bond  of  sympathy 
between  her  and  Carlyle  in  the  beginnings  of  their 
acquaintance.  In  spite  of  his  peasant  awkwardness  of 
person  and  manners  her  quick  penetration  discovered 
the  promise  of  his  genius.  Their  letters  were  at  first 
of  things  literary  ;  then  the  personal  note  began  to  be 
heard.  Their  courtship  —  "a  sore  fight :  but  he  won  it," 
as  Carlyle  says  of  Knox's  life  —  was  marked  by  many 
advances  and  retrogressions,  declarations  and  recanta- 
tions, and  has  been  represented  in  many  different  lights. 
Professor  Norton  is  the  present  guardian  of  their  let- 
ters, and  has  told  how  they  impress  him,  in  the  Ap- 
pendix to  his  edition  of  the  "  Early  Letters  of  Thomas 
Carlyle,"  vol.  i.  They  were  married  in  October, 
1826. 

Carlyle's  character  as  a  husband  has  been  one  of  the 
battle-grounds  of  literature.   If  we  were  to  take  at  full 


LIFE  OF  CARLYLE  xiii 

value  everytliing  which  Mrs.  Carlyle  said  about  their 
married  life  to  her  friends,  or  wrote  in  her  letters  and 
journal,  and  everything  that  Carlyle  wrote  in  his  grief- 
stricken,  remorseful  "  Reminiscences  "  after  her  death, 
we  could  hardly  avoid  the  conclusion  that  he  was  a  ver- 
itable ogre,  and  that  she  led  one  of  the  most  wretched 
lives  recorded  in  books.  During  most  of  their  married 
life  she  suffered  from  varying  degrees  of  ill  health,  — 
sometimes  being  so  unstrung  nervously  as  to  be  hardly 
herself,  and  hardly  responsible  for  her  bitter  words. 
Under  such  conditions  trilies  easily  became  tragedies 
in  her  judgment,  and  her  husband  had  too  much  of 
the  same  tendency  to  be  able  to  restore  the  balance. 
At  times  both  seemed,  as  Hume  said  of  Rousseau,  to 
have  been  "  born  without  a  skin."  Carlyle's  entire  ab- 
sorption in  his  work  and  consequent  thoughtless  neglect 
of  his  wife's  comfort  when  a  book  was  in  process  of  cre- 
ation, as  well  as  his  occasional  violent  bursts  of  temper 
while  under  the  exhausting  strain  of  steady  writing, 
were  matters  which  doubtless  every  one  will  agree  with 
Mrs.  Carlyle  in  wishing  otherwise.  And  no  doubt  one 
also  wishes  that  her  talent  for  enduring  much  hardness 
had  been  mated  with  a  better  talent  for  consuming 
her  own  smoke,  and  a  softer  tact  in  bringing  her  hus- 
band's real  tenderness  to  the  surface.  But  after  the 
worst  has  been  told,  as  it  has  been  most  abundantly,  it 
is  still  visible  to  the  discriminating  eye  that  the  love  be- 
tween them  was  far  too  deep  and  strong  for  any  tempo- 
rary irritations  and  misunderstandings  to  extinguish. 
"  Oh  !  if  I  could  but  see  her  once  more,"  he  wrote,  in  his 
lonehness  after  her  death,  "  were  it  but  for  five  min- 
utes, to  let  her  know  that  I  always  loved  her  through 


xlv  INTRODUCTION 

all  that !    She  never  did  know  it,  never  !  "   But  I  be- 
lieve she  did  know  it,  nevertheless. 

After  living  a  year  and  a  half  just  out  of  Edinburgh, 
Carlyle  writing  for  the  reviews,  they  gave  up  the  finan- 
cial struggle  and  retired  to  a  farm  far  out  in  the  coun- 
try at  Craigenputtock,  "  Hill  of  Hawks,"  belonging 
to  the  Welshes.  It  was  not  an  ideal  spot  for  a  viva- 
cious and  high-spirited  society  belle,  but  Mrs.  Carlyle's 
life  was  not,  as  some  would  persuade  us,  one  of  unre- 
lieved gloom  and  unthanked  drudgery ;  her  nature  had 
other  sides,  and  she  was  above  all  things  desirous,  now 
and  all  her  life,  with  unflinching  loyalty,  of  doing  what- 
ever would  promote  Carlyle's  effectiveness  in  his  literary 
work.  Here,  with  a  brief  sojourn  in  London  and  another 
in  Edinburgh,  he  battled  on  for  six  years,  with  Jane 
Welsh's  help,  writing  numerous  miscellaneous  essays 
(including  "  Burns  ")  and  "  Sartor  Resartus,"  —  of  all 
his  books  the  most  completely  expressive  of  the  author, 
and  containing  the  germ  of  almost  all  his  later  teach- 
ings. The  manuscript  of  "  Sartor "  was  at  first  re- 
fused by  all  the  publishers  —  by  some  more  abruptly 
than  by  others ;  it  was  finally  published  serially  in 
"  Frazer's  Magazine,"  1833-4,  and  provoked  a  storm  of 
ridicide  and  disgust.  Mrs.  Carlyle  pronounced  it  "  a 
work  of  genius,  dear ;  "  but  Emerson,  in  America,  and 
one  Father  O'Shea,  of  Cork,  seemed  to  be  the  only 
"  Public  "  that  essentially  disagreed  with  the  reviewer 
who  pronounced  it  "  a  heap  of  clotted  nonsense."  Not 
long  before  Carlyle's  death  thirty  thousand  copies  of  a 
cheap  edition  were  sold  in  a  few  weeks. 

Meanwhile  Carlyle,  seeing  that  Craigenputtock  was 
in  various  respects  ill  suited  to  his  needs  as  a  literary 


LIFE   OF  CARLYLE  XV 

man,  determined  to  burn  his  ships  and  seek  his  for- 
tune in  London.  He  himself  went  on  ahead  to  engage 
a  house,  and  in  June,  1834,  they  settled  at  No.  5  (now 
24)  Cheyne  Row,  Chelsea,  their  home  for  the  rest  of 
their  lives.  Poverty  still  dogged  his  heels.  "  It  is  now 
some  three-and-twenty  months,"  he  writes,  in  February, 
1835,  "since  I  have  earned  one  penny  by  the  craft  of 
literature.  ...  I  have  been  ready  to  work,  I  am  abler 
than  ever  to  work,  .  .  .  yet  so  it  stands."  By  about 
the  end  of  the  month  the  first  volume  of  the  "  French 
Revolution"  was  finished.  It  represented  five  months 
of  the  most  exacting  labor,  besides  a  great  deal  of 
earlier  reading  and  thinking.  The  manuscript,  hav- 
ing been  lent  to  Carlyle's  friend  MiU,  was  carelessly 
exposed  to  the  ravages  of  a  serving-maid,  and,  "  except 
four  or  five  bits  of  leaves,  irrevocably  annihilated." 
"  Well,  Mill,  poor  fellow,  is  terribly  cut  up,"  were 
Carlyle's  first  words  to  his  wife,  when  Mill  left  their 
house  after  reporting  the  calamity ;  "  we  must  en- 
deavor to  hide  from  him  how  very  serious  this  busi- 
ness is  to  us."  He  braced  hiinself  manfully  for  the 
effort  of  re-writing,  and  the  entire  work  was  published 
early  in  1837,  winning  immediate  and  enthusiastic 
recognition.  "Everybody,"  said  Thackeray,  who  re- 
viewed it  for  "  The  Times,"  "  is  astonished  at  every 
other  body's  being  pleased  with  this  wonderful  per- 
formance." But  Carlyle  always  felt,  contrary  to  Mrs. 
Carlyle's  opinion,  that  the  re- written  first  volume  was 
inferior  to  the  original.  The  same  3^ear  saw  Carlyle's 
first  appearance  on  the  platform  in  a  successful  course 
of  lectures  on  "German  Literature,"  —  followed  in 
successive  years  by  other  courses,  ending  with  "  Heroes 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

and  Hero-Worsliip,"  1840.  The  lean  years  were  over, 
and  his  "place  and  subsistence"  were  thenceforth  as- 
sured. 

Carlyle  had  read  much  on  Cromwell  before  treating 
him  in  "  Heroes,"  and  was  already  hard  at  work  on 
the  book  which  was  to  finish  the  work  of  vindication 
begun  in  the  lecture,  when  he  turned  aside  for  a  few 
weeks,  in  the  first  months  of  1843,  to  write  "  Past  and 
Present."  "Oliver  Cromwell's  Letters  and  Speeches" 
appeared  in  1845,  and  established  a  new  reputation 
for  Carlyle  as  an  original  historian.  His  deep  scorn 
and  distrust  of  contemporary  political  and  economic 
methods  were  expressed  in  the  denunciatory  "  Latter- 
Day  Pamphlets"  of  1850.  "^le  wrote  in  his  study, 
alone  with  his  anger,  his  gi'ief,  and  his  biliousness." 
But  the  atmosphere  was  clear  and  serene  in  his  "  Life 
of  Sterling,"  1851. 

The  Carlyles  entered  "the  valley  of  the  shadow 
of  Frederick "  the  next  year,  Carlyle  making  a 
trip  to  Germany  to  collect  materials,  though  the 
fu'st  volumes  did  not  appear  until  1858.  As  time 
went  on  the  book  became  an  increasingly  intolerable 
burden  to  him :  "A  task  that  I  cannot  do,"  he  wrote 
to  Emerson,  "  that  generally  seems  to  me  not  worth 
doing,  and  yet  that  must  be  done.  No  job  apjjroach- 
ing  to  it  in  ugliness  was  ever  cut  out  for  me ;  nor  had 
I  any  motive  to  go  on,  except  the  sad  negative  one. 
Shall  we  be  beaten  in  our  old  days?"  The  final  vol- 
umes appeared  in  1865.  For  vivid  realistic  picturing 
and  story,  and  for  completeness  and  accuracy  of  detail, 
"  The  History  of  Frederick  II,  commonly  called  the 
Great "  is  one  of  the  greatest  of  historical  works. 


LIFE  OF  CARLYLE  xvii 

In  1865  the  studentsof  Edinburgh  University  elected 
Carlyle  Lord  Rector,  and  the  following  April  he  fulfilled 
the  sole  duty  of  that  honorary  office  in  the  delivery  of 
the  most  famous  of  all  Lord-Rectorial  addresses,  '•'•  On 
the  Choice  of  Books."  It  was  heard  with  tremendous 
enthusiasm,  the  students  thronging  about  him  at  the 
close  with  hearts  deeply  moved.  "  A  perfect  triumph," 
Professor  Tjaidall  telegraphed  to  Mrs.  Carlyle.  Her 
pride  and  delight  in  her  husband's  success  were 
unbounded.  While  all  the  land  was  still  reechoing 
praise  of  the  address  there  came  to  him,  in  the  North, 
a  telegram  announcing  Mrs.  Carlyle's  death.  She  had 
died  suddenly,  of  heart  failure,  while  riding  in  Hyde 
Park.  The  next  day  Carlyle  received  her  last  letter, 
full  of  affectionate  anticipation  o^  his  return.  On  her 
tomb  at  Haddington  are  inscribed  the  following  words, 
written  by  Carlyle  :  "  In  her  bright  existence  she  had 
more  sorrows  than  are  common,  but  also  a  soft  invinci- 
bility, a  capacity  of  discernment,  and  a  noble  loyalty 
of  heart  that  are  rare.  For  forty  years  she  was  the 
true  and  loving  helpmate  of  her  husband,  and  by  act 
and  word  unweariedly  fowarded  him  as  none  else  coidd 
in  all  of  worthy  that  he  did  or  attempted.  She  died 
at  London,  21st  April,  186iS,  suddenly  snatched  from 
him,  and  the  light  of  his  life  is  as  if  gone  out." 

During  the  remaining  years  of  his  life  Carlyle  pro- 
duced a  few  essays,  but  no  gTcat  work.  His  latest 
writings  were  dictated,  for  the  palsy  of  his  hand  pi-e- 
vented  his  writing  himself.  Honors  showered  in  on 
him  from  his  own  country  and  from  abroad.  He  was 
persuaded  to  accept  the  Prussian  Ordre  j^oiir  le 
Merite ;  and  was  offered  the  Grand  Cross  of  the  Bath, 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

which  he  declined.  He  died  on  the  4th  of  February, 
1881,  and  was  buried,  according  to  his  own  request, 
beside  the  graves  of  his  own  kin  in  the  Ecclefechan 
kirkyard,  though  offer  was  made,  as  he  had  foreseen 
it  might  be,  of  a  place  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

Carlyle's  was  far  too  great  and  too  complex  a  na- 
ture to  be  disposed  of  in  a  few  paragraphs  of  an  In- 
troduction, but  the  main  traits  were  clearly  marked. 
To  the  reader  of  "  Heroes  "  one  fundamental  charac- 
teristic of  its  author  is  evident  on  every  page  ,  —  his 
uncompromising  love  of  truth.  Whether  or  not  his 
judgments  in  specific  cases  were  right  or  wrong,  it  is 
clear  to  even  the  most  unsympathetic  that  they  were 
delivered  earnestly  by  one  of  the  most  genuinely  sin- 
cere of  men.  From  the  begining  to  the  end  he  waged 
ceaseless  war  with  all  forms  of  shams  and  convention- 
alities, —  "  simulacra  "  and  "  formulas."  His  intensity 
was  like  that  of  his  Hero-poet,  Dante.  He  demanded 
of  others  the  same  sterling  honesty  of  purpose  which 
was  exemplified  in  himself ;  and  his  indignation,  pro- 
voked by  any  sort  of  injustice  or  hypocrisy,  uttered 
itself  in  blasting  denunciation  or  ridicule,  according 
to  his  mood.  But  in  conversation  his  keen  sense  of 
humor  often  got  the  better  of  his  indignation,  and 
"  he  would  dissolve  his  fiercest  objurgations  and  tu- 
mults of  wrath,"  says  Professor  Masson,  "  in  some 
sudden  phantasy  of  the  sheerly  absurd,  and  a  burst  of 
uproarious  laughter." 

"  A  man  who  does  not  know  rigor,  cannot  pity 
either,"  writes  Carlyle  in  his  characterization  of 
Dante.    Of  Carlyle's  quick  sympathy  and  generosity 


LIFE  OF  CARLYLE  xiy 

the  stories  are  innumerable,  —  toward  his  family  first 
of  all  and  always,  to  old  friends  of  Ecclefechan  days, 
to  London  street  beggars,  and  to  charitable  and 
philanthropic  causes  of  all  sorts,  to  which  in  the  later 
years  of  jjrosperity  he  gave  bountifully  and  usually 
anonymously.  "  His  only  expensive  luxury  was  char- 
ity." "  All  the  bitterness  is  love  with  the  point  re- 
versed," was  Mrs.  Browning's  interpretation  of  his 
occasional  seeming  harshness.  Similar  is  Harriet 
Martineau's  comment :  "  His  excess  of  sympathy  has 
been,  I  believe,  the  master-pain  of  his  life,  .  .  .  and 
the  savageness  which  has  come  to  be  a  main  charac- 
teristic ...  is,  in  my  opinion,  a  mere  expression  of 
his  intolerable  sympathy  with  suffering."  "  I  believe," 
wrote  Leigh  Hunt,  who  lived  near  him  in  Chelsea, 
"  that  what  Mr.  Carlyle  loves  better  than  all  his  fault- 
finding, with  all  its  eloquence,  is  the  face  of  any  human 
creature  that  looks  suffering  and  loving  and  sincere." 
The  emphasis  that  Carlyle  lays  upon  these  qualities  in 
several  of  his  Heroes  reflects  their  presence  in  himself. 
A  third  trait  of  character  revealed  in  "  Heroes  "  is 
his  deep  religiousness.  Carlyle's  creed  was  not  Chris- 
tian, if  "  Christian  "  implies  belief  in  the  miraculous 
elements  of  the  New  Testament  story  ;  and  no  form  of 
church  organization  or  creed  won  more  than  tolerance 
from  him.  But  as  deep  and  unshakable  as  a  man's 
could  be,  was  his  belief  in  the  reality  of  an  unseen, 
spiritual  universe,  —  infinite,  eternal,  mysterious,  yet 
touching  the  world  of  men  intimately  at  all  points. 
To  his  faith  there  was  no  dividing  line  between  the 
natural  and  the  supernatural :  all  was  miracvdous. 
That  communion  of  the  spirit  of  man  with  the  "  In- 


XX  INTRODUCTION 

finite  Unnamable  "  was  possible,  was  his  con^action. 
"  Can  a  man's  soul,  to  this  hour,  get  guidance  by  any 
other  method  than  intrinsically  by  that  same,  —  de- 
vout prostration  of  the  earnest  struggling  soul  before 
the  Highest,  the  Giver  of  all  Light ;  be  such  prayer 
a  spoken,  articulate,  or  be  it  a  voiceless,  inarticulate 
one  ?    There  is  no  other  method."  ^ 

Carlyle  had  the  defects  of  his  qualities.  The  in- 
tensity of  his  hatred  of  semblances  and  untruths 
occasionally  lacked  the  sense  of  proportion,  and  led 
him  to  spend  his  energies  in  attack  on  insignificant 
evils.  He  thought  sometimes  that  he  had  "  roused  a 
lion,"  when  he  had  only  "  started  a  hare."  And  his 
own  opinions  were  held  with  so  much  earnestness  that 
he  was  at  times  deaf  to  valid  arguments  on  the  other 
side  of  the  question. 

If  he  was  sensitively  pitiful  of  the  pains  and  hard- 
ships of  others,  he  was  also  sometimes  over-impressed 
with  the  sense  of  his  own  distresses,  some  of  which, 
in  truth,  were  not  light.  Against  the  petty  irritations 
of  daily  life,  —  interruptions  of  his  work-time,  defects 
of  cooking,  or  excess  of  miscellaneous  neighborhood 
noises,  —  he  was  defenceless  by  temperament,  dyspep- 
sia, and  sleeplessness.  But  one  remembers  the  story  of 
Mill  and  the  burned  manuscript,  and  forbears  to  cast 
a  stone.  "  Not  how  much  chaff  is  in  you  ;  but  whether 
you  have  any  wheat."  ^ 

As  time  enables  us  to  judge  more  justly  of  this, 
the  most  remarkable  personality  in  the  literary  world 
of  the  last  century,  we  see  in  him  increasingly  much 
to  admire,  much  to  love,  and  much  less  to  pardon. 
1  Heroes,  p.  303.  ^  Heroes,  p.  86. 


CARLYLE'S  LECTURES  xxi 


II 


THE   FOUR   COURSES    OF   LECTURES,   AND   THE   PUBLI- 
CATION OF  HEROES  AND    HERO-WORSHIP 

About  the  time  that  the  Carlyles  settled  in  London, 
Emerson  had  suggested  to  Carlyle  that  he  shoidd  come 
to  America  to  lecture  ;  but  the  project  was  not  cari'ied 
out,  though  Emerson  made  most  alluring  estimates  of 
the  profit  and  recognition  to  be  gained  by  such  a  trip, 
and  the  possibility  was  debated  in  their  letters  for  a 
number  of  years.  However,  at  the  suggestion  of  Miss 
Martineau  and  several  other  friends,  it  was  decided  to 
make  the  experiment  of  lecturing  in  London,  they 
undertaking  the  responsibility  of  all  business  arrange- 
ments. The  subject  of  the  course  was  "  German  Lit- 
erature," a  subject  on  which  Carlyle  was  supremely 
qualified  to  speak.  Nevertheless  he  was  alarmed  at  the 
prospect ;  for  he  had  never  but  once  before  addressed 
an  audience  —  at  a  dinner  at  Dumfries,  when  he  had 
said  a  few  words  —  and  he  was  determined  to  speak, 
not  read.  He  "  felt  as  if  .  .  .  the  natural  speech  for 
(him)  would  be  this  :  '  Good  Christians,  it  has  become 
entirely  impossible  for  me  to  talk  to  you  about  German 
or  any  other  literature  or  terrestrial  thing ;  one  request 
only  I  have  to  make,  that  you  would  be  kind  enough 
to  cover  me  under  a  tub  for  the  next  six  weeks  and  to 
go  your  ways  with  all  my  blessing.'  "  "  Fool  creatures 
come  hither  for  diversion  "  were  likely  to  be  his  open- 
ing words,  Mrs.  Carlyle  suggested.  "  The  audience  .  .  . 
was  very  humane   to  me,"  he  wrote   to   his   brother 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

John  at  the  end  of  the  course.  "They  seemed  indeed 
to  be  not  a  little  astonished  at  the  mid  Annandale 
voice  which  occasionally  grew  high  and  earnest.  .  .  . 
I  hardly  ever  in  my  life  had  such  a  moment  as  that 
of  the  commencement.  ...  I  was  wasted  and  fretted 
to  a  thread.  My  tongue,  let  me  drink  as  I  would,  con- 
tinued dry  as  charcoal.  The  people  were  there  ;  I  was 
obliged  to  tumble  in  and  start."  To  this  Mrs.  Carlyle 
added  a  P.  S.  :  "I  do  not  find  that  my  husband  has 
given  you  any  adequate  notion  of  the  success  of  his 
lectures ;  but  you  will  make  large  allowance  for  the 
known  modesty  of  the  man.  Nothing  that  he  has  ever 
tried  seems  to  me  to  have  carried  such  conviction 
to  the  public  heart  that  he  is  a  real  man  of  genius, 
and  worth  being  kept  alive  at  a  moderate  rate."  The 
course  was  given  in  May,  1837,  and  netted  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty-five  pounds. 

A  second  course,  on  "The  History  of  Literature," 
followed,  the  next  year,  with  still  greater  harvest  of  fame 
and  funds.  Even  the  lecturer  could  not  blind  himself 
to  its  success.  He  wrote  to  his  mother  :  "  The  lectures 
went  on  better  and  better,  and  grew  at  last,  or  threat- 
ened to  grow,  quite  a  flaming  affair.  I  had  people 
greeting  [weeping]  yesterday.  .  .  .  My  audience  was 
supposed  to  be  the  best,  for  rank,  beauty,  and  intelli- 
gence, ever  collected  in  London."  And  to  Emerson : 
"  The  superfine  people  listened  to  the  rough  utterance 
with  patience,  with  favour,  increasing  to  the  last." 

At  one  of  the  lectures  of  this  year  Mrs.  Carlyle  tells 
of  Carlyle's  being  seized  with  sudden  panic,  which  nev- 
ertheless he  suppressed :  "  He  was  imputing  the  pro- 
found attention  with  which  the  audience  listened,  to  an 


CARLYLE'S  LECTURES  xxiii 

awful  sympathising  expectation  on  their  part  of  a  mo- 
mentary break-down,  when  all  at  once  they  broke  into 
loud  plaudits,  and  he  thought  they  must  all  have  gone 
clean  out  of  their  wits  !  "  But  the  "  loud  plaudits"  were 
after  all  not  greatly  to  his  taste,  and  certainly  paid  him 
ill  for  the  agouies  of  lecturing.  "  If  dire  famine  drive 
me,"  he  declared,  "  I  must  even  lecture,  but  not  other- 
wise." 

In  1839,  the  third  course,  on  "  The  Revolutions  of 
Modern  Europe,"  attracted  a  still  larger,  still  more  dis- 
tinguished audience.  The  inward  tumidt  and  torment 
of  the  lecturer,  hardly  diminished  by  growing  familiar- 
ity with  his  task,  appeared  in  a  new  guise.  "  Unless  he 
can  get  hardened  in  this  trade,"  wrote  Mrs.  Carlyle, 
"  he  certainly  ought  to  discontinue  it ;  for  no  gain  or 
eclat  that  it  can  yield  is  compensation  enough  for  the 
martyrdom  it  is  to  himself,  and  through  him  to  me. 
...  In  defect  of  the  usual  measure  of  agitation  hefoi^e- 
hand,  he  has  taken  to  the  new  and  curious  crotchet 
of  being  ready  to  hang  himself  after,  in  the  idea  that 
he  has  made  a  '  horrible  pluister  [mess]  of  it,'  .  .  . 
and  he  remains,  under  applause  that  would  turn  the 
head  of  most  Lecturers,  haunted  by  the  pale  ghost  of 
last  day's  Lecture  '  shaking  its  gory  locks  at  him  '  till 
next  day's  arrive  to  take  its  place  and  torment  him  in 
its  turn."  "  In  short,  I  felt,  after  it  was  over,  like  a 
man  that  had  been  robbing  henroosts,"  is  the  lecturer's 
picturesque  confession.  But,  after  all,  he  admitted 
that  in  the  last  lecture  of  the  course  he  gave  "  very 
considerably  the  nearest  approach  to  a  good  lecture 
they  ever  got  out  of  me,  carried  the  whole  business 
glowing  after  me,  and  ended  half  an  hour  beyond  my 


xxiv  INTRODUCTION 

time  with  universal  decisive  applause  sufficient  for  the 
situation." 

The  best  was  yet  to  be.  In  February,  1840,  Car- 
lyle  was  beginning  to  plan  for  the  coming  season's 
lectures,  and  to  "  have  even,  or  seem  to  have,  some 
primordhim  of  a  subject  "  in  view.  Once  in  motion 
the  plan  developed  rapidly.  The  course  v/as  definitely 
outlined  some  time  before  the  1st  of  April,  when  he 
bespoke  Emerson's  pity  for  his  "  frightful  outlook 
vnih.  a  Course  of  Lectures  to  give  '  On  Heroes  and 
Hero -Worship,'  —  from  Odin  to  Robert  Burns !  "  The 
"  hardening  "  that  Mrs.  Carlyle  desired  for  him  was 
yet  a  great  way  off  :  "  My  lectures  come  on  this  day 
two  weeks.  O  heaven !  I  cannot  '  speak  ; '  I  can  only 
gasp  and  writhe  and  stutter,  a  spectacle  to  gods  and 
fashionables,  being  forced  to  it  by  want  of  money." 
He  wrote  out  these  lectures  more  carefully  than  the 
preceding  ones,  but  delivered  them,  as  before,  with- 
out notes.i  At  the  first  lecture  the  "  room  was  con- 
siderably fuller  than  even  before  —  the  bonniest  and 
brawest  of  peoi^le,"  wrote  Carlyle  to  his  mother;  and 
the  company  was  stiU  larger  at  the  later  lectures.  The 
second  lecture  was,  even  to  the  lecturer,  a  manifest 
success .  "  The  people  seemed  greatly  astonished  and 
greatly  pleased.  I  vomited  forth  on  them  like  wild 
Annandale  grapeshot."  But  we  hear  soon  that  "  Jane 
says,  and  indeed  I  rather  think  it  is  true,  that  these 
[fourth  and  fifth]  lectures  are  among  the  best  I  ever 
gave."  Finally,  "  I  got  through  the  last  lecture  yes- 
terday in  very  tolerable  style,  seemingly  much  to  the 

^  See  a  hitherto  unpublished  letter  in  MacMechan's  Heroes 
and  Hero -Worship  (Ginn  &  Co.),  p.  xxvii. 


CARLYLE'S  LECTURES  xxv 

satisfaction  of  all  parties  ;  and  the  people  all  expressed 
in  a  great  variety  of  ways  much  very  genuine-look- 
ing friendliness  for  nie.  ...  I  will  not  be  in  haste 
to  throw  myself  into  such  a  tumble  again."  To  his 
brother  John  he  reported  that  "  the  lecturing  busi- 
ness went  off  with  sufficient  eclat.  The  course  was 
generally  judged,  and  I  rather  join  therein  myself, 
to  be  the  bad  best  I  have  yet  given.  ...  In  a  word, 
we  got  right  handsomely  through."  Carlyle's  next 
appearance  as  a  lecturer  was  not  until  1866,  before 
the  Edinburgh  students.  Though  he  began  to  feel,  as 
he  wrote  to  Emerson  a  month  and  more  later,  that  he 
might  in  the  end  learn  to  speak,  and  was  still  grate- 
ful to  "  the  beautiful  people  "  that  "  listened  with 
bovmdless  tolerance,  eager  attention,"  nevertheless  he 
writes  to  a  friend,  "  It  is  my  most  ardent  hope  that 
this  exhibition  may  be  my  last  of  such  ;  that  Neces- 
sity with  her  bayonet  at  my  back,  may  never  again 
drive  me  up  thither."  By. the  spring  of  the  next  year 
Necessity's  bayonet  was  permanently  unfixed,  and 
the  "  mixture  of  prophecy  and  ])lay-actorism,"  as  he 
dubbed  it,  renounced  at  the  height  of  his  success,  was 
never  undertaken  again. 

Of  Carlyle's  personal  appearance  at  this  time,  and 
the  way  it  impressed  his  audience,  we  have  plentiful 
description.  His  figure  was  tall,  wiry,  and  gavmt,  his 
erect  carriage  showing  no  sign  as  j'et  of  the  stoop  of 
the  later  years  ;  his  hair  was  heavy,  dark,  and  wavy, 
over  a  face,  smooth-shaven,  whose  rugged  features  re- 
vealed the  sturdy  strength  of  the  Scotch  peasant  char- 
acter.   The  eyes  were  gray-blue,  large  and  cl?rir  raid 


xxvi  IN  TR  OD  UCTION 

piercing,  deep-set  under  a  craggy  bro-.v.  The  complex- 
ion was  ruddy.  He  had  none  of  the  arts  of  the  prac- 
tised orator,  —  at  least  at  the  start.  He  spoke  with  a 
strong  Scotch  accent,  vehemently,  "  the  Annandale 
voice  gollying  at  them,"  determination  to  say  only 
the  things  known  for  certain  sounding  forth  in  every 
tone  of  it.  "  Yellow  as  a  guinea,  with  downcast  eyes, 
broken  speech  at  the  beginning,  and  fingers  which 
nervously  picked  at  the  desk  before  him,  he  could  not 
for  a  moment  be  supposed  to  enjoy  his  own  effort," 
is  the  impression  recorded  by  Harriet  iSIartineau,  the 
prime  mover  of  the  whole  project.  That  the  experi- 
ence of  lecturing  had  not  been  profitless  to  him  was 
evidenced  at  the  opening  lecture  of  the  second  course. 
Mrs.  Carlyle  attended  and  "  took  one  glimpse  at  him 
(just  one)  when  he  came  on  the  stage,  —  and  to  be  sure 
he  was  as  white  as  a  pocket-handkerchief,  but  he  made 
no  gasping  and  spluttering,  as  I  found  him  doing  last 
year  at  the  fourth  lecture.  By  and  by,  ...  he  had  re- 
covered all  that  '  bonny  red  in  his  cheeks  ; '  .  .  .  and 
having  a  very  fine  light  from  above  shining  down  on 
him  he  really  looked  a  surprisingly  beautiful  man. 
.  .  .  He  delivered  it  very  gracefully  ;  that  is  to  say, 
without  any  air  of  thinking  about  his  delivery,  which 
is  the  best  grace  of  any."  One  final  glimpse  of  him, 
almost  at  the  end  of  the  last  course,  is  vouchsafed 
us  through  the  eyes  of  the  gifted  young  Quakeress, 
Caroline  Fox :  "  The  audience  .  .  .  was  very  thought- 
ful and  earnest  in  appearance  ;  it  had  come  to  hear 
the  Hero  portrayed  in  the  form  of  the  Man  of  Let- 
ters. Carlyle  soon  appeared,  and  looked  as  if  he  felt 
a  well-dressed  London  crowd  scarcely  the  arena  for 


CARLYLE'S  LECTURES  xxvii 

him  to  figure  in  as  a  popular  lecturer.  He  is  a  tall, 
robust-looking  man  ;  rugged  simplicity  and  indomit- 
able strength  are  in  his  face,  and  such  a  glow  of  genius 
in  it  —  not  always  smouldering  there,  but  flashing 
from  his  beautiful  grey  eyes,  from  the  remoteness  of 
their  deep  setting  under  that  massive  brow.  His  man- 
ner is  very  quiet,  but  he  speaks  like  one  tremendously 
convinced  of  what  he  utters,  and  who  had  much  — 
very  much  in  him  that  was  quite  unutterable,  quite 
unfit  to  be  uttered  to  the  uninitiated  ear ;  and  when 
the  Englishman's  sense  of  beauty  or  truth  exhibited 
itself  in  vociferous  cheers,  he  would  impatiently,  al- 
most contemptuously,  wave  his  hand,  as  if  that  were 
not  the  sort  of  homage  Truth  demanded.  He  began 
in  a  rather  low  nervous  voice,  with  a  broad  Scotch  ac- 
cent, but  it  soon  grew  firm,  and  shranli  not  abashed 
from  its  great  task." 

While  the  lectures  were  still  in  progress,  Carlyle 
had  already  thought  of  printing  them  as  a  book  ;  and 
rewriting  them  for  publication  ("  with  Emendations 
and  Additions,"  say  the  early  title-pages)  was  the  task 
he  laid  upon  himself  to  accomplish  before  taking  a  trip 
to  Scotland.  Two  were  finished  in  June  ;  "  My  fourth 
lecture  was  finished  three  days  ago,"  he  could  write 
to  his  mother,  the  first  of  August ;  "  a  week  hence  I 
will  attack  my  two  remaining  lectures  and  dash  them 
off  speedily."  He  was  well  tired  of  his  task  before  it 
was  finished.  "  The  whole  business  seems  to  me  weari- 
some triviality,  yet  toilsome  to  produce,  which  I  would 
like  to  throw  into  the  fire."  To  find  a  publisher  was 
the  next  step,  but  publishers  were  discouragingly  un- 


xxviii  INTRODUCTION 

responsive.  As  late  as  the  9th  of  December,  "  My 
Hero-Lectui'es  lie  still  in  Manuscript,"  Emerson  is 
told.  "  Fraser  offers  no  amount  of  cash  adequate  to 
be  an  outward  motive,"  But  in  February,  1841,  he 
has  "  bargained  with  Fraser,"  he  writes  to  his  mother, 
and  the  lectures  "  are  now  at  press.  .  .  .  He  would 
give  me  only  =£75,  the  dog." 

Emerson  had  made  arrangements  for  the  publica- 
tion of  the  book  in  America,  but  Appleton  anticipated 
him  with  a  pirated  edition  in  April.  At  the  end  of 
that  month,  Emerson  writes,  "  The  New  York  news- 
papers print  the  book  in  chapters,  and  3"ou  circulate 
for  six  cents  per  newspaper  at  the  corners  of  all  streets 
in  New  York  and  Boston  ;  gaining  in  fame  what  you 
lose  in  coin."  Of  editions  since  on  both  sides  of  the 
water  the  number  is  incalculable. 

Ill 
carltle's  style  in  heroes  and  hero-worship 

The  book  thus  given  to  the  world  occupies  in  liter- 
ary form  and  style  a  middle  ground  between  the  half 
extempore  lecture  and  the  finished  essay,  being  more 
carefully  wrought  than  the  former,  but  in  a  manner 
consciously  more  informal,  less  literary,  than  the  lat- 
ter. "  The  style  of  them  requires  to  be  low-pitched, 
as  like  talk  as  possible,"  Carlyle  wrote  to  his  brother 
while  preparing  the  book  for  the  press.  Nevertheless 
it  exhibits  many  of  the  characteristics  of  the  typical 
"  Carlylese,"  the  strength  which  is  more  often  the 
might  of  the  full  mountain  torrent  than  the  quiet 
power  of   the  wide  river.    In  "  Heroes "   the   unex- 


CARLYLE'S  STYLE  xxix 

pected  turns  and  transitions  are  more  noticeable  even 
than  in  Carlyle's  usual  style,  and  the  mention  in  his 
gracious  apologetic  farewell  of  "  these  abrupt  utter- 
ances thrown-out  isolated  "  is  not  without  justification. 
The  sudden  breaks  and  changes  of  construction,  the 
dismembered  sentences,  the  unusual  (or  at  least  un- 
literary)  idiomatic  expressions,  are  "as  like  talk  as 
possible  ; "  while  the  accent  and  intonation  of  the  lec- 
turer's voice  become  almost  audible  with  the  aid  of 
unusually  plentiful  italics,  capitals,  dashes,  and  ex- 
clamation points.  As  he  wrote,  it  seems  as  if  he  must 
have  imagined  himself  once  again  actually  speaking 
to  his  audience. 

Although  talk,  even  when  as  carefully  prepared  as 
these  lectures  were,  can  never  without  affectation  dis- 
play as  much  literary  ornament  as  befits  the  more 
deliberate  and  accomplished  forms  of  writing,  yet  the 
style  of  "  Heroes  "  is  notable,  if  in  a  less  degree  than" 
that  of  Carlyle's  other  books,  for  its  wealth  of  illus- 
tration, allusion,  and  quotation,  the  abundant  fruit  of 
his  voracious  i-eading  and  retentive  memory.  In  a 
similar  way  the  diction  of  "Heroes,"  more  simple 
than  that  of  "  Sartor  Resartus  "  or  "  The  French  Rev- 
olution," is  nevertheless  conspicuous  for  its  rich  vari- 
ety, —  the  vocabulary  employed  in  Carlyle's  works  all 
together  being,  by  accession  of  borrowed,  coined,  and 
new-compounded  words,  more  extensive  than  that  of 
any  other  English  writer  save  Shakspeare. 

One  of  the  most  characteristic  marks  of  Carlyle's 
literary  handiwork  is  his  love  of  concrete  image  or  pic- 
turesque illustration,  even  when  dealing  with  abstract 
or  undefined  material.    Out  of  this  arises  incidentally 


XXX  INTRODUCTION 

the  oft  employed  device  of  pluralizing  proper  nouns, 
the  "  Dantes  "  and  "  Luthers  "  of  the  old  Norse  race, 
the  "  Goethes  "  and  "  Shakspeares  "  of  the  modern 
world,  summing  up  in  a  word  the  substance  of  pages 
of  conjecture  or  comment.  Conversely,  such  an  image 
as  that  of  the  whole  of  human  existence,  "  the  infinite 
conjugation  of  the  verb  To  do,'^  figured  concretely  in 
the  Tree  Igdrasil,  wins  at  once  his  enthusiastic  accep- 
tance. 

If  he  pictures  abstract  ideas,  so  much  the  more  do 
his  words,  like  his  father's,  render  "almost  ocularly 
visible  "  the  external  aspects  of  nature  or  "  the  human 
face  divine,"  —  as  witness,  in  "  Heroes,"  the  descrip- 
tions of  Iceland  and  Arabia,  and  the  portraits  of  Dante 
and  Luther.  Emerson,  in- a  letter  to  Carlyle,  speaks 
of  "  those  thirsty  eyes,  those  portrait-eating,  portrait- 
painting  eyes  of  thine."  It  is  a  fact  worthy  of  note 
that  one  of  the  most  persuasive  expounders  of  the 
mystical  transcendental  philosophy,  whose  favorite  quo- 
tation was  Prospero's  famous  words  in  "  The  Tem- 
pest," "  We  are  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  on," 
should  be  conspicuous  above  most  other  writers  for 
the  realism  and  concreteness  of  his  style. 

Sincerity  and  strength  made  a  more  forcible  appeal 
to  Carlyle  than  grace  and  delicacy,  as  his  style  plainly 
indicates.  He  is  Thor,  thundering  at  false  semblance 
of  every  sort,  gripping  the  hammer  of  his  prose  style 
"  till  the  knuckles  grow  white,"  illuminating  his  sub- 
ject with  lightning  flashes  of  insight,  rather  than 
Apollo,  beautiful,  radiant,  casting  a  gently  increasing 
light,  quelling  sei'pents  with  carefully  aimed  arrows. 
"A  cei'tain  homely  truthfidness  and  rustic  strength,  a 


CARLYLE'S  STYLE  xxxi 

great  rude  sincerity,  discloses  itself  here,"  as  Carlyle 
himself  said  of  Thor's  religion  as  compared  with 
Apollo's.  So  much  the  more,  by  contrast,  the  occa- 
sional sudden  glory  of  beauty  or  tenderness,"  like  bright 
metal  on  a  sullen  ground,"  surprises  and  delights. 
Carlyle  had  no  talent  for  versifying,  nor  had  he  pa- 
tience to  obey  the  rules  of  metrical  composition,  though 
some  of  his  verse  translations  are  well  done  ;  but  the 
rhythm  of  his  prose  rises  spontaneously  at  times  into 
Miltonic  harmonies,  and  with  other  gifts  of  the  poet 
he  was  richly  endowed.  "  There  are,"  says  Mr.  Augus- 
tine Birrell,^  in  one  of  the  best  short  appreciations  of 
Carlyle  ever  written,  "  passages  in  '  Sartor  Resartus ' 
and  the  '  French  Revolution '  which  have  long  appeared 
to  me  to  be  the  sublimest  poetry  of  the  century ;  and 
it  was  therefore  with  great  jjleasure  that  I  found  Mr. 
Justice  Stephen  .  .  .  introducing  a  quotation  from 
the  eighth  chapter  of  the  third  book  of  '  Sartor  Resar- 
tus' mth  the  remark  that  '  it  is  perhaps  the  most  mem- 
orable utterance  of  the  greatest  poet  of  the  age.' " 

One  quality  of  the  true  Carlylese,  and  that  nearly 
if  not  quite  the  most  pervasive,  the  play  of  a  some- 
what grotesque  sense  of  humor,  is  almost  entirely  miss- 
ing from  "  Heroes."  There  is  just  a  touch  of  it  in  the 
"  reservoir  of  Dukes  "  at  Leipzig,^  and  in  one  or  two 
other  passages ;  but  one  may  imagine  that  the  travail 
of  soul  that  accompanied  the  preparation  of  the  lec- 
tures, as  well  as  the  scorn  of  cheap  methods  of  win- 
ning applause,  might  have  discouraged  its  customary 
activity.  A  nd  after  all,  the  Carlylean  humor  was  never 
of  the  platform  type. 

^  Obiter  Dicta,  First  Series,  pp.  44,  45.  ^  Page  196. 


xxxii  INTRODUCTION 


IV 


CAKLTLE  S   TEACHINGS   IN   HEROES   AND 
HERO-WORSHIP 

The  main  thesis  of  the  book  is  that  "  Universal  His- 
tory is  at  bottom  the  History  of  the  Great  Men  who 
have  worked  here  ;  "  or,  stating  the  same  idea  from  a 
different  point  of  view,  that  "  in  all  times  and  places 
the  Hero  has  been  worshipped.  It  will  ever  be  so  .  .  . 
we  all  of  ns  reverence  and  must  ever  reverence  Great 
Men."  This  doctrine,  like  most  of  Cavlyle's,  had  been 
already  clearly  propounded  in  "  Sartor  Resartus."  In 
the  chapter  entitled  "  The  Centre  of  Indifference  "  he 
writes :  "  Great  Men  are  the  inspired  (speaking  and 
acting)  Texts  of  that  divine  Book  of  Hevelations, 
whereof  a  Chapter  is  completed  from  epoch  to  epoch, 
and  by  some  named  History;  to  which  inspired  Texts 
your  numerous  talented  men,  and  your  innumerable 
untalented  men,  are  the  better  or  worse  exegetic  com- 
mentaries, and  wagonload  of  too-stupid,  heretical  or 
orthodox,  weekly  Sermons.  For  my  study,  the  inspired 
Texts  themselves !  "  And  again,  later  in  the  book, 
in  "  Organic  Filaments  : "  "  Meanwhile,  observe  with 
joy,  so  cunningly  has  Nature  ordered  it,  that  whatso- 
ever man  ought  to  obey  he  cannot  but  obey.  Before 
no  faintest  revelation  of  the  Godlike  did  he  ever  stand 
irreverent ;  least  of  all,  when  the  Godlike  showed  it- 
self revealed  in  his  fellow-man.  Thus  is  there  a  true 
religious  Loyalty  forever  rooted  in  his  heart ;  nay,  in 
all  ages,  even  in  ours,    it  manifests  itself  as  a  more 


CARLYLE'S  TEACHINGS  xxxni 

or  less  orthodox  Hero-worship.  In  which  fact,  that 
Hero-worship  exists,  has  existed,  and  will  forever  exist, 
universally  among  Mankind,  mayest  thou  discern  the 
corner-stone  of  living-rock,  whereon  all  PoKties  for  the 
remotest  time  may  stand  secure." 

The  varieties  of  Heroes  are,  of  course,  as  many  as 
the  varieties  of  human  activity ;  in  the  present  hook 
Carlyle  chose  to  recognize  six  classes  because  he  was 
to  give  a  course  of  six  lectures.  But  one  of  the  basal 
ideas  of  Carlyle's  hero-doctrine  is  that  all  heroes  are 
of  essentially  the  same  stuff  :  "  The  Hero  can  be  Poet, 
Prophet,  King,  Priest,  or  what  you  will,  according  to 
the  kind  of  world  he  finds  himself  born  into."  "  True, 
there  are  aptitudes  of  Nature,"  he  grants,  but  into 
what  form  of  activity  the  God-given  hero-stuff  shall  be 
finally  molded  by  circumstances  is  "  an  inexjjlicably 
complex  controversial-calculation  between  the  world 
and  him  !  "  Carlyle  gives  many  names  to  the  heroic 
quality  which  ••'  we  have  no  good  name  'for  :  "  sincerity, 
originality,  intellect,  genius,  inspiration,  insight,  — 
they  have  all  at  bottom  the  idea  of  the  ability  to  see 
through  the  deceitful  "  shows  of  things  "  into  the  true 
heart  of  things,  the  power  to  distinguish  between  the 
essential  and  the  superficial.  "  The  flame-image  of 
Reality  glares-in "  upon  the  hero;  and,,  obedient  to 
the  irresistible  power  of  that  vision,  he  orders  his  life 
in  accord  with  eternal  truth.  Such  is  the  "  sincerity  " 
upon  which,  with  ever  intensified  emphasis,  Carlyle 
insists. 

The  stress  thus  laid  upon  "  the  seeing  eye,"  the 
power  to  penetrate  through  appearances,  is  associated 
with  a  fundamental  conception  in  Carlyle's  philoso- 


xxxiv  INTRODUCTION 

phy,  often  expressed  in  the  following  pages,  that 
what  is  perceived  in  the  material  world  is  rather  what 
the  senses  have  the  power  of  perceiving  than  what 
really  exists.  "  The  world  of  Nature,  for  every  man, 
is  the  Phantasy  of  Himself."  How  much  more,  then, 
do  the  more  subjective  aspects  of  spiritual  truth  de- 
mand a  clear  inner  vision  ! 

The  immediate  practical  aim  of  the  individual  lec- 
tures was,  by  the  application  of  the  theory  in  specific 
cases,  to  establish  a  right  —  in  several  instances,  a 
new  —  interpretation  of  the  character,  and  a  right 
valuation  of  the  influence,  of  certain  great  men  of  the 
past ;  among  whom  Mahomet,  Knox,  Boswell,  Burns, 
and  Cromwell  owe  mainly  to  Carlyle  the  recognition 
that  the  present  age  accords  them.  Thus  the  book 
becomes  "  a  gallery  of  biograjjhical  portraiture,  which 
no  student  of  the  men  depicted  by  it  can  neglect." 

In  the  weariness  of  re-writing  the  lectures,  Carlyle 
had  condemned  them  as  having  "  nothing  new,  nothing 
that  to  me  is  not  old.'"'  The  charge  is  true,  in  a  sense, 
of  the  moral  teaching  of  all  of  his  books  after  '•'  Sar- 
tor Resartus."  The  gospel  that  he  felt  called  to 
preach  consisted  of  a  few  fundamental  principles  which 
he  proclaimed  repeatedly  with  unflagging  earnestness. 
That  higher  ^han  happiness  is  blessedness,  the  blessed- 
ness of  knowing  and  doing  one's  work ;  that  surren- 
der of  self,  "  trusting  imperturbably  in  the  appointment 
and  choice  of  the  upper  Powers,"  is  not  only  a  duty 
but  a  necessity  ;  that  "  a  man  lives  by  believing  some- 
thing," and  that  without  belief  no  genuine,  fruitful 
acting  is  possible,  but  only  "  dexterous  Similitude  of 
Acting;"  that  the  nature  of  duty  is  infinite:   "Would 


CARLYLE'S   TEACHINGS  xxxv 

in  this  world  is  a  mere  zero  to  Should ; "  that  right 
and  might  are  in  the  long  run  identical ;  that  the  ideal 
government  for  any  people  is  a  government  of  the 
ablest  man  or  men,  a  hero-archy  ;  and  that  the  business 
of  government  is  not  led sser  fair e,  to  let  things  take 
care  of  themselves,  but  to  be  the  guardian  and  guide 
of  the  less  heroic  —  the  principle  of  state  interference 
being  a  fundamental  point  of  Carlyle's  political  teach- 
ing: these  were  the  truths  that  he  strove  without 
ceasing  to  impress  upon  his  age  and  generation.  To 
the  persevering  reader  of  Carlyle  they  become  as  fa- 
miliar actors  on  the  scene,  having  their  exits  and  their 
entrances,  and  each  one  in  its  time  playing  its  part 
in  many  different  books. 

Of  "  Heroes  "  in  particular  the  moral  appeal  is  com- 
prehended in  the  words  with  which  Carlyle  closes  his 
discussion  of  the  function  of  the  Hero-Priest :  ^  "If 
Hero  mean  sincere  tnan^  why  may  not  every  one  of 
us  be  a  Hero  ?  A  world  all  sincere,  a  believing  world : 
the  like  has  been ;  the  like  will  be  again,  —  cannot 
help  being.  That  were  the  right  sort  of  Worshippers 
for  Heroes  :  never  could  the  truly  Better  be  so  rev- 
•ereneed  as  where  all  were  True  and  Good  !  " 

"  It  is  a  goustrous  determined  speaking  out  of  the 
truth  about  several  things,"  was  Carlyle's  final  comment 
vn  the  book.  "  The  people  will  be  no  worse  for  it  at 
present.  The  astonishment  of  many  of  them  is  likely 
to  be  considerable."  "Heroes  and  Hero -Worship"  no 
longer  astonishes ;  for  Carlyle's  teaching  has  become 
an  essential,  indistinguishable  element  in  the  thought 
of  the  present  age :  even  as  he  says  in  the  opening  lec- 
1  Heroes,  p.  178. 


xxxvi  INTRODUCTION 

ture,  "  Every  true  Thinker  to  this  hour  is  a  kind  o£ 
Odin,  teax;hes  men  his  way  of  thought,  spreads  a 
shadow  of  his  own  likeness  over  sections  of  the  His- 
tory of  the  World."  To  us  the  book  stands  as  the 
impassioned  utterance  of  a  great  modern  prophet,  a 
powerful  inspiration  to  nobler  thinking  and  feeling 
and  doing,  a  scripture  in  which  we  may  rightly  think 
we  have  "flame-images"  of  eternal  truths. 


ON  HEROES,  HERO-WORSHIP, 

AND  THE 

HEROIC  IN  HISTORY 

LECTURE  I 

THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.     ODIN.     PAGANISM  : 
SCANDINAVIAN  MYTHOLOGY 

[Tuesday,  5tli  May  1840.] 
We  have  undertaken  to  discourse  here  for  a  little 
on  Great  Men,  their  manner  of  appearance  in  our 
world's  business,  how  they  have  shaped  themselves  in 
the  world's  history,  what  ideas  men  formed  of  them, 
what  work  they  did;  —  on  Heroes,  namely,  and  on 
their  reception  and  performance ;  what  I  call  Hero- 
worship  and  the  Heroic  in  human  affairs.  Too  evi- 
dently this  is  a  large  topic  ;  deserving  quite  other 
treatment  than  we  can  expect  to  give  it  at  present. 
A  large  topic  ;  indeed,  an  illimitable  one  ;  wide  as  Uni- 
versal History  itself.  For,  as  I  take  it.  Universal  His- 
tory, the  history  of  what  man  has  accomplished  in  this 
world,  is  at  bottom  the  History  of  the  Great  Men  who 
have  worked  here.  They  were  the  leaders  of  men,  these 
great  ones ;  the  modellers,  patterns,  and  in  a  wide  sense 
creators,  of  whatsoever  the  general  mass  of  men  con- 
trived to  do  or  to  attain ;  all  things  that  we  see  standing 
accomplished  in  the  world  are  properly  the  outer  mate- 
rial result,  the  practical  realisation  and  embodiment, 
of  Thoughts  that  dwelt  in  the  Great  Men  sent  into  the 


2  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

world :  the  soul  of  the  whole  world's  history,  it  may 
justly  be  considered,  were  the  history  of  these.  Too 
clearly  it  is  a  topic  we  shall  do  no  justice  to  in  this  place ! 
One  comfort  is,  that  Great  Men,  taken  up  in  any 
way,  are  profitable  company.  We  cannot  look,  how- 
ever imperfectly,  upon  a  gi'cat  man,  without  gaining 
something  by  him.  He  is  the  living  light-fountain, 
which  it  is  good  and  pleasant  to  be  near.  The  light 
which  enlightens,  which  has  enlightened  the  darkness 
of  the  world ;  and  this  not  as  a  kindled  lamp  only, 
but  rather  as  a  natural  luminary  shining  by  the  gift  of 
Heaven ;  a  flowing  light-fountain,  as  I  say,  of  native 
original  insight,  of  manhood  and  heroic  nobleness ; 
—  in  whose  radiance  all  souls  feel  that  it  is  well  with 
them.  On  any  terms  whatsoever,  you  will  not  grudge 
to  wander  in  such  neighbourhood  for  a  while.  These 
Six  classes  of  Heroes,  chosen  out  of  widely-distant 
countries  and  epochs,  and  in  mere  external  figure 
differing  altogether,  ought,  if  we  look  faithfully  at 
them,  to  illustrate  several  things  for  us.  Could  we  see 
them  well,  we  should  get  some  glimpses  into  the  very 
marrow  of  the  world's  history.  How  hapjiy,  could 
1  but,  in  any  measure,  in  such  times  as  these,  make 
manifest  to  you  the  meanings  of  Heroism ;  the  divine 
relation  (for  I  may  well  call  it  such)  which  in  all 
times  unites  a  Great  Man  to  other  men ;  and  thus,  as 
it  were,  not  exhaust  my  subject,  but  so  much  as  break 
ground  on  it !    At  all  events,  I  must  make  the  attempt. 

It  is  well  said,  in  every  sense,  that  a  man's  religion 
is  the  chief  fact  with  regard  to  him.  A  man's,  or  a 
nation  of  men's.    By  religion  I  do  not  mean  here  the 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  3 

church-creed  which  he  professes,  the  articles  of  faith 
which  he  will  sign  and,  in  words  or  otherwise,  assert ; 
not  this  wholly,  in  many  cases  not  this  at  all.  We  see 
men  of  all  kinds  of  professed  creeds  attain  to  almost  all 
degrees  of  worth  or  worthlessuess  under  each  Or  any  of 
them.  This  is  not  what  I  call  religion,  this  profession 
and  assertion  ;  which  is  often  only  a  profession  and  as- 
sertion from  the  outworks  of  the  man,  from  the  mere 
argumentative  region  of  him,  if  even  so  deep  as  that. 
But  the  thing  a  man  does  practically  believe  (and  this 
is  often  enough  without  asserting  it  even  to  himseK, 
much  less  to  others)  ;  the  thing  a  man  does  practically 
lay  to  heart,  and  know  for  certain,  concerning  his  vital 
relations  to  this  mysterious  Universe,  and  his  duty  and 
destiny  there,  that  is  in  all  cases  the  primary  thing  for 
him,  and  creatively  determines  all  the  rest.  That  is 
his  religion ;  or,  it  may  be,  his  mere  scepticism  and 
no-religion:  the  manner  it  is  in  which  he  feels  himself 
to  be  spiritually  related  to  the  Unseen  World  or  No- 
World  ;  and  I  say,  if  you  tell  me  what  tliat  is,  you  tell 
me  to  a  very  great  extent  what  the  man  is,  what  the 
kind  of  things  he  will  do  is.  Of  a  man  or  of  a  nation 
we  inquire,  therefore,  first  of  all,  What  religion  they 
had  ?  Was  it  Heathenism,  —  plurality  of  gods,  mere 
sensuous  representation  of  this  Mystery  of  Life,  and 
for  chief  recognised  element  tlierein  Physical  Force  ? 
Was  it  Christianism ;  faith  in  an  Invisible,  not  as  real 
only,  but  as  the  only  reality ;  Time,  through  every 
meanest  moment  of  it,  resting  on  Eternity  ;  Pagan 
empire  of  Force  displaced  by  a  nobler  supremacy,  that 
of  Holiness?  Was  it  Scepticism,  uncertainty  and 
inquiry  whether    there  was  an   Unseen  World,   any 


4  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

Mystery  of  Life  except  a  mad  one  ;  —  doubt  as  to  all 
this,  or  jjerliaps  unbelief  and  flat  denial?  Answering 
of  this  question  is  giving  us  the  soul  of  the  history 
of  the  man  or  nation.  The  thoughts  they  had  were 
the  parents  of  the  actions  they  did ;  their  feelings 
were  parents  of  their  thoughts  :  it  was  the  unseen  and 
spiritual  in  them  that  determined  the  outward  and 
actual;  —  their  religion,  as  I  say,  was  the  great  fact 
about  them.  In  these  Discourses,  limited  as  we  are,  it 
will  be  good  to  direct  our  survey  chiefly  to  that  reli- 
gious phasis  of  the  matter.  That  once  known  well,  all 
is  known.  We  have  chosen  as  the  first  Hero  in  our 
series,  Odin  the  central  figure  of  Scandinavian  Pagan- 
ism ;  an  emblem  to  us  of  a  most  extensive  province  of 
things.  Let  us  look  for  a  little  at  the  Hero  as  Divin- 
ity, the  oldest  primary  form  of  Heroism. 

Surely  it  seems  a  very  strange-looking  thing  this 
Paganism ;  almost  inconceivable  to  us  in  these  days. 
A  bewildering,  inextricable  jungle  of  delusions,  confu- 
sions, falsehoods,  and  absurdities,  covering  the  whole 
field  of  Life !  A  thing  that  fills  us  with  astonishment, 
ahnost,  if  it  were  possible,  with  incredulity,  —  for  truly 
it  is  not  easy  to  understand  that  sane  men  could  ever 
cahiily,  with  their  eyes  open,  believe  and  live  by  such 
a  set  of  doctrines.  That  men  should  have  worshipped 
their  poor  fellow-man  as  a  God,  and  not  him  only,  but 
stocks  and  stones,  and  all  manner  of  animate  and  inan- 
imate objects ;  and  fashioned  for  themselves  such  a  dis- 
tracted chaos  of  hallucinations  by  way  of  Theory  of  the 
Universe :  all  this  looks  like  an  incredible  fable.  Never- 
theless, it  is  a  clear  fact  that  they  did  it.  Such  hideous 
inextricable  jungle  of  misworships,  misbeliefs,   men, 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  5 

matle  as  we  are,  did  actually  hold  by,  and  live  at  home 
in.  This  is  strange.  Yes,  we  may  pause  in  sorrow  and 
silence  over  the  depths  of  darkness  that  are  in  man ; 
if  we  rejoice  in  the  heights  of  purer  vision  he  has  at- 
tained to.  Such  things  were  and  are  in  man ;  in  all 
men ;  in  us  too. 

Some  speculators  have  a  short  way  of  accounting 
for  the  Pagan  religion :  mere  quackery,  priestcraft, 
and  dupery,  say  they ;  no  sane  man  ever  did  believe 
it,  —  merely  contrived  to  persuade  other  men,  not 
worthy  of  the  name  of  sane,  to  believe  it !  It  will  be 
often  our  duty  to  protest  against  this  sort  of  hjqiothe- 
sis  about  men's  doings  and  history ;  and  I  here,  on  the 
very  threshold,  protest  against  it  in  reference  to  Pagan- 
ism, and  to  all  other  isms  by  which  man  has  ever  for 
a  length  of  time  striven  to  walk  in  this  world.  They 
have  all  had  a  truth  in  them,  or  men  would  not  have 
taken  them  up.  Quackery  and  dupery  do  abound  ;  in 
religions,  above  all  in  the  more  advanced  decaying 
stages  of  religions,  they  have  fearfully  abounded  ;  but 
quackery  was  never  the  originating  influence  in  such 
things ;  it  was  not  the  health  and  life  of  such  things, 
but  their  disease,  the  sure  precursor  of  their  being 
about  to  die !  Let  us  never  forget  this.  It  seems  to 
me  a  most  mournful  hypothesis,  that  of  quackery  giving 
birth  to  any  faith  even  in  savage  men.  Quackery  gives 
birth  to  nothing  ;  gives  death  to  all  things.  We  shall 
not  see  into  the  true  heart  of  anything,  if  we  look 
merely  at  the  quackeries  of  it ;  if  we  do  not  reject  the 
quackeries  altogether  ;  as  mere  diseases,  corruptions, 
with  which  our  and  all  men's  sole  duty  is  to  have 
done  with  them,  to  sweep  them  out  of  our  thoughts 


6  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

as  out  of  our  practice.  Man  everywhere  is  the  born 
enemy  of  lies.  I  find  Grand  Lamaismi  itself  to  have 
a  kind  of  truth  in  it.  Read  the  candid,  clear-sighted, 
rather  sceptical  Mr.  Turner's  Account  of  his  Em- 
hassy  ^  to  that  country,  and  see.  They  have  their 
belief,  these  poor  Thibet  people,  that  Providence  sends 
down  always  an  Incarnation  of  Himself  into  every 
generation.  At  bottom  some  belief  in  a  kind  of 
Pope  !  At  bottom  still  better,  belief  that  there  is  a 
Greatest  Man ;  that  he  is  discoverable ;  that,  once 
discovered,  we  ought  to  treat  him  with  an  obedience 
which  knows  no  bounds !  This  is  the  truth  of  Grand 
Lamaism ;  the  '  discoverability '  is  the  only  error  here. 
The  Thibet  priests  have  methods  of  their  own  of  dis- 
covering what  Man  is  Greatest,  fit  to  be  supreme  over 
them.  Bad  methods :  but  are  they  so  much  worse 
than  our  methods,  —  of  understanding  him  to  be  always 
the  eldest-born  of  a  certain  genealogy?  Alas,  it  is  a 
difficult  thing  to  find  good  methods  for !  —  We  shall 
begin  to  have  a  chance  of  understanding  Paganism, 
when  we  first  admit  that  to  its  followers  it  was,  at  one 
time,  earnestly  true.    Let  us  consider  it  very  certain 

1  Lamaism  is  a  form  of  Buddhism.  Buddha  is  supposed  to  be 
incarnate  in  the  grand  lamas,  the  priest-gods,  of  whom  the 
Dalai  Lama  at  Lhassa  is  the  most  important.  On  the  death  of  a 
grand  lama,  the  spirit  passes  to  another  incarnation,  eitlier  telling 
before  death  or  indicating  afterward  by  a  sign  in  what  young 
child  it  is  to  be  found. 

2  Captain  Samuel  Turner,  An  Account  of  an  Embassy  to  the 
Court  of  the  Teshoo  Lama  in  Tibet,  etc.  London,  180G.  See  espe- 
cially Part  II,  chaps,  viii  and  ix.  He  describes  (pp.  333-335)  his 
official  visit  to  an  eighteen  months'  old  lama  who  received  him 
with  great  dignity  and  decorum,  and  every  evidence  of  under- 
standing, though  not  yet  old  enough  to  talk. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  7 

that  men  did  believe  in  Paganism  ;  men  with  open  eyes, 
sound  senses,  men  made  altogether  like  oui'selves ; 
that  we,  had  we  been  there,  should  have  believed  in 
it.    Ask  now.  What  Paganism  coidd  have  been  ? 

Another  theory,  somewhat  more  respectable,  attrib- 
utes such  things  to  Allegory.  It  was  a  play  of  poetic 
minds,  say  these  theorists ;  a  shadowing-forth,  in  alle- 
gorical fable,  in  personification  and  visual  form,  of 
what  such  poetic  minds  had  known  and  felt  of  this 
Universe.  Which  agrees,  add  they,  with  a  primary 
law  of  human  nature,  still  everywhei-e  observably  at 
work,  though  in  less  important  things.  That  what  a 
man  feels  intensely,  he  struggles  to  speak-out  of  him, 
to  see  represented  before  him  in  visual  shape,  and  as 
if  with  a  kiiid  of  life  and  historical  reality  in  it.  Now 
doubtless  there  is  such  a  law,  and  it  is  one  of  the 
deepest  in  human  nature  ;  neither  need  we  doubt  that 
it  did  operate  fundamentally  in  this  business.  The 
hypothesis  which  ascribes  Paganism  wholly  or  mostly 
to  this  agency,  I  call  a  little  more  respectable  ;  but  I 
cannot  yet  call  it  the  true  hypothesis.  Think,  would 
we  believe,  and  take  with  us  as  our  life-guidance, 
an  allegory,  a  poetic  sport  ?  Not  sport  but  earnest  is 
what  we  should  require.  It  is  a  most  earnest  thing  to 
be  alive  in  this  world ;  to  die  is  not  sport  for  a  man. 
Man's  life  never  was  a  sport  to  him ;  it  was  a  stern 
reality,  altogether  a  serious  matter  to  be  alive  I 

I  find,  therefore,  that  though  these  Allegory  the- 
orists are  on  the  way  towards  truth  in  this  matter, 
they  have  not  reached  it  either.  Pagan  Religion  is 
indeed  an  Allegory,  a  Symbol  of  what  men  felt  and 
knew  about  the  Universe ;  and  all  Religions  are  Sym- 


8  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

bols  of  that,  altering  always  as  that  alters  :  but  it  seems 
to  me  a  radical  perversion,  and  even  i/j version,  of  the 
business,  to  put  that  forward  as  the  origin  and  mov- 
ing cause,  when  it  was  rather  the  result  and  termina- 
tion. To  get  beautiful  allegories,  a  perfect  poetic  sym- 
bol, was  not  the  want  of  men  ;  but  to  know  what  they 
were  to  believe  about  this  Universe,  what  course  they 
were  to  steer  in  it ;  what,  in  this  m3'sterious  Life  of 
theirs,  they  had  to  hope  and  to  fear,  to  do  and  to  for- 
bear doing.  The  Pilgrinis  Progress  is  an  Allegory, 
and  a  beautiful,  just  and  serious  one  :  but  consider 
whether  Bunyan's  ^  Allegory  could  have  j^receded  the 
Faith  it  symbolises  I  The  Faith  had  to  be  already 
there,  standing  believed  by  everybody ;  —  of  which  the 
Allegory  could  then  become  a  shadow  ;  aiid,  with  all 
its  seriousness,  we  may  say  a  sportful  shadow,  a  mere 
play  of  the  Fancy,  in  comparison  with  that  awful  Fact 
and  scientific  certainty  which  it  poetically  strives  to 
emblem.  The  Allegory  is  the  product  of  the  certainty, 
not  the  producer  of  it  ;  not  in  Bunyan's  nor  in  any 
other  case.  For  Paganism,  therefore,  we  have  still  to 
inquire,  Whence  came  that  scientific  certainty,  the 
parent  of  such  a  bewildered  heap  of  allegories,  errors 
and  confusions  ?    How  was  it,  what  was  it  ? 

Surely  it  were  a  foolish  attempt  to  pretend  '  explain- 
ing,' in  this  place,  or  in  any  place,  such  a  phenome- 
non as  that  far-distant  distracted  cloudy  imbroglio  ^  of 
Paganism,  —  more  like  a  cloudfield  than  a  distant 
continent  of  firm  land  and  facts !    It  is  no  longer  a 

^  John  Bunyan :  1628-1688,   Pilgrim's   Progress,  First   Part, 
1678;  Second  Part,  1684. 
2  Entaiigleuient. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  9 

reality,  yet  it  was  one.  We  ougbt  to  understand  that 
this  seeming  cloudfield  was  once  a  reality ;  that  not 
poetic  allegory,  least  of  all  that  dupery  and  deception 
was  the  origin  of  it.  Men,  I  say,  never  did  believe 
idle  songs,  never  risked  their  soid's  life  on  allegories : 
men  in  all  times,  especially  in  early  earnest  times, 
have  had  an  instinct  for  detecting  quacks,  for  detest- 
ing quacks.  Let  us  try  if,  leaving  out  both  the  quack 
theory  and  the  allegory  one,  and  listening  with  affec- 
tionate attention  to  that  far-off  confused  rumour  of 
the  Pagan  ages,  we  cannot  ascertain  so  much  as  this 
at  least,  That  there  was  a  kind  of  fact  at  the  heart 
of  them ;  that  they  too  were  not  mendacious  and  dis« 
tracted,  but  in  their  own  poor  way  true  and  sane ! 

You  remember  that  fancy  ^  of  Plato's,  of  a  man  who 
had  grown  to  maturity  in  some  dark  distance,  and  was 
brought  on  a  sudden  into  the  upper  air  to  see  the  sun 
rise.  What  would  his  wonder  be,  his  rapt  astonishment 
at  the  sight  we  daily  witness  with  indifference !  With 
the  free  open  sense  of  a  child,  yet  with  the  ripe  fac- 
ulty of  a  man,  his  whole  heart  would  be  kindled  by 
that  sight,  he  would  discern  it  well  to  be  Godlike,  his 
soul  would  fall  down  in  worship  before  it.  Now,  just 
such  a  childlike  greatness  was  in  the  primitive  nations. 
The  first  Pagan  Thinker  among  rude  men,  the  first 
man  that  began  to  think,  was  precisely  this  child-man 
of  Plato's.  Simple,  open  as  a  chikl,  yet  with  the  depth 
and  strength  of  a  man.    Nature  had  as  yet  no  name  to 

^  "  Behold  !  human  beings  living  in  an  underground  den." 
Plato's  Republic,  beginning  of  Bk.  vii.  See  Jowett's  translation 
(N.  Y.  1892),  iii,  214-217. 


10  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

him ;  he  had  not  yet  united  under  a  name  the  infinite 
variety  of  sights,  sounds,  shapes  and  motions,  which 
we  now  collectively  name  Universe,  Nature,  or  the 
like,  —  and  so  with  a  name  dismiss  it  from  us.  To 
the  wild  deep-hearted  man  all  was  yet  new,  not  veiled 
under  names  or  formulas ;  it  stood  naked,  flashing-in 
on  him  there,  beautiful,  a^vful,  unspeakable.  Nature 
was  to  this  man,  what  to  the  Thinker  and  Prophet  it 
for  ever  is,  pi'eteru2itx\T2l.  This  green  flowery  rock- 
built  earth,  the  trees,  the  mountains,  rivers,  many- 
sounding  seas ;  —  that  great  deep  sea  of  azure  that 
swims  overhead ;  the  winds  sweeping  through  it ;  the 
black  cloud  fashioning  itself  together,  now  pouring 
out  fire,  now  hail  and  rain  ;  what  is  it  ?  Ay,  what  ? 
At  bottom  we  do  not  yet  know ;  we  can  never  know 
at  all.  It  is  not  b}'  our  superior  insight  that  we  escape 
the  difficulty ;  it  is  by  our  superior  levity,  our  inatten- 
tion, our  want  of  insight.  It  is  by  not  thinking  that 
we  cease  to  wonder  at  it.  Hardened  round  us,  encas- 
ing wholly  every  notion  we  form,  is  a  wrappage  of 
traditions,  hearsays,  mere  words.  We  call  that  fire 
of  the  black  thunder-cloud  '  electricity,'  and  lecture 
learnedly  about  it,  and  grind  the  like  of  it  out  of 
glass  and  silk :  but  what  is  it  ?  What  made  it  ?  Whence 
comes  it  ?  Whither  goes  it  ?  Science  has  done  much 
for  us  ;  but  it  is  a  poor  science  that  would  hide  from  us 
the  great  deep  sacred  infinitude  of  Nescience,  whither 
we  can  never  penetrate,  on  which  all  science  swims  as  a 
mere  superficial  film.  This  world,  after  all  our  science 
and  sciences,  is  still  a  miracle  ;  wonderful,  inscrutable, 
magical  and  more,  to  whosoever  -will  think  of  it. 
That  great  mystery  of  Time,  were  there  no  other; 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  11 

tie  illimitable,  silent,  never-resting  thing  called  Time, 
rolling,  rushing  on,  swift,  silent,  like  an  all-embracing 
ocean-tide,  on  which  we  and  all  the  Universe  swim 
like  exhalations,  like  apparitions  which  are,  and  then 
are  not :  this  is  for  ever  very  literally  a  miracle  ;  a 
thing  to  strike  us  dumb,  —  for  we  have  no  word  to 
speak  about  it.  This  Universe,  ah  me  —  what  could 
the  wild  man  know  of  it ;  what  can  we  yet  know  ? 
That  it  is  a  Force,  and  thousandfold  Complexity  of 
Forces ;  a  Force  which  is  not  we.  That  is  all ;  it  is 
not  we,  it  is  altogether  different  from  ws.  Force, 
Force,  everywhere  Force ;  we  ourselves  a  mysterious 
Force  in  the  centre  of  that.  '  There  is  not  a  leaf  rot- 
ting on  the  highway  but  has  Foree  in  it :  how  else 
could  it  rot  ? '  Nay  surely,  to  the  Atheistic  Thinker, 
if  such  a  one  were  possible,  it  must  be  a  miracle  too, 
this  huge  illimitable  whirlwind  of  Force,  which  envel- 
ops us  here ;  never-resting  whirlwind,  high  as  Immen- 
sity, old  as  Eternity.  What  is  it  ?  God's  creation,  the 
religious  people  answer ;  it  is  the  Almighty  God's ! 
Atheistic  science  babbles  poorly  of  it,  with  scientific 
nomenclatures,  experiments  and  what-not,  as  if  it  were 
a  poor  dead  thing,  to  be  bottled-up  in  Leyclen  jars  and 
sold  over  counters :  but  the  natural  sense  of  man,  in 
all  times,  if  he  will  honestly  apply  his  sense,  proclaims 
it  to  be  a  living  thing,  —  ah,  an  unspeakable,  godlike 
thing ;  towards  which  the  best  attitude  for  us,  after 
never  so  much  science,  is  awe,  devout  prostration  and 
humility  of  soul ;  worship  if  not  in  words,  then  in  si- 
lence. 

But  now  I  remark  further  :  What  in  such  a  time 
as  ours  it  requires  a  Prophet  or  Poet   to  teach  us. 


12  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

namely,  the  stripping-off  of  those  poor  undevout  wrap- 
pages, nomenclatures  and  scientific  hearsays,  —  this, 
the  ancient  earnest  soul,  as  yet  unencumbered  with 
these  things,  did  for  itself.  The  world,  which  is  now 
divine  only  to  the  gifted,  was  then  divine  to  whoso- 
ever would  turn  his  eye  upon  it.  He  stood  bare  be- 
fore it  face  to  face.  '  All  was  Godlike  or  God : '  — 
Jean  Paul  ^  still  finds  it  so  ;  the  giant  Jean  Paul,  who 
has  power  to  escape  out  of  hearsa3's :  but  there  then 
were  no  hearsays.  Canopus  ^  shining-down  over  the 
desert,  with  its  blue  diamond  brightness  (that  wild 
blue  spirit-like  brightness,  far  brighter  than  we  ever 
witness  here),  would  pierce  into  the  heart  of  the 
wild  Ishmaelitish  ^  man,  whom  it  was  guiding  through 
the  solitary  waste  there.  To  his  wild  heart,  with  all 
feelings  in  it,  with  no  speech  for  any  feeling,  it  might 
seem  a  little  eye,  that  Canopus,  glaneing-out  on  him 
from  the  great  deep  Eternity  ;  revealing  the  inner 
Splendour  to  him.  Cannot  we  understand  how  these 
men  rcorshipped  Canopus  ;  became  what  we  call  Sa- 
beans  *  worshipping  the  stars  ?  Such  is  to  me  the  secret 
of  all  forms  of  Paganism.     Worship  is  transcendent 

^  Jean  Paul  Friedrich  Richter  (1763-1825),  the  greatest  humor- 
ist in  modern  German  literature.  His  rather  barbarous  and 
chaotic  style  and  his  idealism  powerfully  iufluenced  Carlyle, 
who  wrote  two  essays  on  hitn,  and  quotes  hini  constantly.  The 
quotation  liere  is  from  Carlyle's  translation  of  RicLter's  Quintus 
Fixlein,  end. 

2  A  bright  star  in  Argo,  iu  the  Southern  Hemisphere,  invisi- 
ble in  most  of  North  America. 

^  See  p.  68,  n.  3. 

*  From  Saba,  the  host  of  heaven.  They  worshipped  the  sun, 
moon,  fixed  stars,  and  planets,  which  they  believed  to  be  the 
bodily  appearances  of  celestial  spirits.    See  p.  67,  top. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  13 

wonder  ;  wonder  for  which  there  is  now  no  limit  or 
measure  ;  that  is  worship.  To  these  primeval  men, 
all  things  and  everything  they  saw  exist  beside  them 
were  an  emblem  of  the  Godlike,  of  some  God. ' 

And  look  what  perennial  fibre  of  truth  was  in  that. 
To  us  also,  through  every  star,  through  every  blade  of 
grass,  is  not  a  God  made  visible,  if  we  will  open  our 
minds  and  eyes  ?  We  do  not  worship  in  that  way  now  : 
but  is  it  not  reckoned  still  a  merit,  proof  of  what  we 
call  a  '  poetic  nature,'  that  we  recognise  how  every 
object  has  a  divine  beauty  in  it ;  how  every  object 
still  verily  is  '  a  window  through  which  we  may  look 
into  Infinitude  itself '  ?  He  that  can  discern  the  love- 
liness of  things,  we  call  him  Poet,  Painter,  Man  of 
Genius,  gifted,  lovable.  These  poor  Sabeans  did  even 
what  he  does,  —  in  their  own  fashion.  That  they  did 
it,  in  what  fashion  soever,  was  a  merit :  better  than 
what  the  entirely  stupid  man  did,  what  the  horse  and 
camel  did,  —  namely,  nothing ! 

But  now  if  all  things  whatsoever  that  we  look  upon 
are  emblems  to  us  of  the  Highest  God,  I  add  that 
more  so  than  any  of  them  is  man  such  an  emblem. 
You  have  heard  of  St.  Chrysostom's  ^  celebrated  saying 
in  reference  to  the  Shekinah,^  or  Ark  of  Testimony, 
visible  Revelation  of  God,  among  the  Hebrews  :  "  The 
true  Shekinah  is  Man !  "  Yes,  it  is  even  so :  this  is 
no  vain  phrase ;  it  is  veritably  so.    The  essence  of  our 

^  Chrysostom,  "  Golden-montlied  "  (347-407),  preacher-orator 
of  the  early  Greek  Church.  Archbishop  of  Constantinople  from 
398. 

^  The  symbol  of  the  Divine  Presence  in  shape  of  a  cloud  or 
light  over  the  Jewish  Ark  of  the  Covenant.  See  Exodus  xxv, 
10  ff.  ;  Numbers  vii,  89  ;  ix,  15  ff. 


14  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

being,  the  mystery  in  us  that  calls  itself  "  I,"  —  ah, 
what  words  have  we  for  such  things  ?  —  is  a  breath  of 
Heaven;  the  Highest  Being  reveals  himself  in  man. 
This  body,  these  faculties,  this  life  of  ours,  is  it  not  all 
as  a  vesture  for  that  Unnamed  ?  '  There  is  but  one 
Temple  in  the  Universe,'  says  the  devout  Novalis,! 
'  and  that  is  the  Body  of  Man.  Nothing  is  holier  than 
that  high  form.  Bending  before  men  is  a  reverence 
done  to  this  Revelation  in  the  Flesh.  We  touch  Heaven 
when  we  lay  our  hand  on  a  human  body ! '  This 
sounds  much  like  a  mere  flourish  of  rhetoric  ;  but  it  is 
not  so.  If  well  meditated,  it  will  turn  out  to  be  a 
scientific  fact ;  the  expression,  in  such  words  as  can 
be  had,  of  the  actual  truth  of  the  thing.  We  are  the 
miracle  of  miracles,  —  the  great  inscrutable  mystery 
of  God.  We  cannot  understand  it,  we  know  not  how 
to  speak  of  it ;  but  we  may  feel  and  know,  if  we  like, 
that  it  is  verily  so. 

Well ;  these  truths  were  once  more  readily  felt  than 
now.  The  young  generations  of  the  world,  who  had  in 
them  the  freshness  of  young  children,  and  yet  the 
depth  of  earnest  men,  who  did  not  think  they  had 
finished-off  aU  things  in  Heaven  and  Earth  by  merely 
giving  them  scientific  names,  but  had  to  gaze  direct 
at  them  there,  with  awe  and  wonder :  they  felt  better 
what  of  divinity  is  in  man  and  Nature  ;  —  they,  with- 
out being  mad,  could  worship  Nature,  and  man  more 

^  The  pseudonym  of  Friedrich  Leopold  von  Hardenberg 
(1772-1801),  German  poet  and  mystic.  See  Carlyle's  essay  on 
Lim.  In  the  quotation,  Novalis  adapts  from  1  Cor.  iii  :  "  Know  ye 
not  that  ye  are  the  temple  of  God,  and  that  the  Spirit  of  God  dwell- 
etli  in  you  ?  If  any  man  defile  the  temple  of  God,  him  shall  God 
destroy;  for  the  temple  of  God  is  holy,  which  temple  ye  are." 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  15 

than  anything  else  in  Nature.  Worship,  that  is,  as  I 
said  above,  admire  without  limit :  this,  in  the  full  use 
of  their  faculties,  with  all  sincerity  of  heart,  they 
could  do.  I  consider  Hero-Avorship  to  be  the  grand 
modifying  element  in  that  ancient  system  of  thought. 
What  I  called  the  perplexed  jungle  of  Paganism 
sprang,  we  may  say,  out  of  many  roots  :  every  admi- 
ration, adoration  of  a  star  or  natural  object,  was  a  root 
or  fibre  of  a  root ;  but  Hero-worship  is  the  deepest 
rooi  of  all ;  the  tap-root,  from  which  in  a  great  de- 
gree all  the  rest  were  nourished  and  grown. 

And  now  if  worship  even  of  a  star  had  some  mean- 
ing in  it,  how  much  more  might  that  of  a  Hero ! 
Worship  of  a  Hero  is  transcendent  admiration  of  a 
Great  Man.  I  say  great  men  are  still  admirable !  I 
say  there  is,  at  the  bottom,  nothing  else  admirable ! 
No  nobler  feeling  than  this  of  admiration  for  one 
higher  than  himself  dwells  in  the  breast  of  man.  It 
is  to  this  hour,  and  at'  all  hours,  the  vivifying  in- 
fluence in  man's  life.  Religion  I  find  stand  upon  it ; 
not  Paganism  only,  but  far  higher  and  truer  religions, 
—  all  religion  hitherto  known.  Hero-worship,  heart- 
felt prostrate  admiration,  submission,  burning,  bound- 
less, for  a  noblest  godlike  Form  of  Man,  —  is  not 
that  the  germ  of  Christianity  itself?  The  greatest 
of  all  Heroes  is  One  —  whom  we  do  not  name  here  ! 
Let  sacred  silence  meditate  that  sacred  matter  ;  you 
will  find  it  the  ultimate  perfection  of  a  principle 
extant  throughout  man's  whole  history  on  earth. 

Or  coming  into  lower,  less  ?/??speakable  provinces,  is 
not  all  Loyalty  akin  to  religious  Faith  also?  Faith  is 
loyalty  to  some  inspired  Teacher,  some  spiritual  Hero. 


16  LECTURES    ON  HEROES 

And  what  therefore  is  loyalty  proper,  the  life-breath  of 
all  society,  but  an  effluence  of  Hero-worshij),  submis- 
sive admiration  for  the  truly  great  ?  Society  is  founded 
on  Hero-worship.  All  dignities  of  rank,  on  which  hu- 
man association  rests,  are  what  we  may  call  a  Ilero- 
archy  (Government  of  Heroes),  — or  a  Hierarch}-,  for 
it  is  '  sacred '  enough  withal  I  The  Duke  means  Dux^ 
Leader ;  King  is  Kbn-7iing^  Jlcdi-iiuh/,  Man  that  hwws 
or  cans}  Society  everywhere  is  some  representation, 
not  iwsupportably  inaccurate,  of  a  graduated  Worship 
of  Heroes ;  —  reverence  and  obedience  done  to  men 
really  great  and  wise.  Not  iwsupportably  inaccurate, 
I  say !  They  are  all  as  bank-notes,  these  social  digni- 
taries, all  representing  gold  ;  —  and  several  oi  them, 
alas,  always  2ive  forged  notes.  We  can  do  with  some 
forged  false  notes ;  with  a  good  many  even  ;  but  not 
with  all,  or  the  most  of  them  forged  !  No  :  there  have 
to  come  revolutions  then  :  cries  of  Democracy,  Liberty 
and  Equality,  and  I  know  not  what :  —  the  notes  being 
all  false,  and  no  gold  to  be  had  for  them^  peojDle  take 
to  crying  in  their  despair  that  there  is  no  gold,  that 
there  never  was  an}^  I  — '  Gold,'  Hero-worship,  is  never- 
theless, as  it  was  always  and  everywhere,  and  cannot 
cease  till  man  himself  ceases.' 

I  am  well  aware  that  in  these  days  Hero-worship,  the 
thing  I  call  Hero-worship,  professes  to  have  gone  out, 
and  finally  ceased.  This,  for  reasons  which  it  will  be 
worth  while  some  time  to  inquire  into,  is  an  age  that 
as  it  were  denies  the  existence  of  great  men ;  denies  the 

^  King  is  really  O.  E.  cyning  (cynn  -|- patronymic  ing)  or  cyng 
=  scion  of  the  (noble)  kin,  or  son  (or  descendant)  of  one  of  (no- 
ble) birth. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  17 

desirableness  of  great  men.  Show  our  critics  a  great 
man,  a  Luther  for  example,  they  begin  to  what  they 
call  '  account '  for  him  ;  not  to  worship  him,  but  take 
the  dimensions  of  him,  —  and  bring  him  out  to  be  a 
little  kind  of  man  !  He  was  the  '  creature  of  the  Time,' 
they  say ;  the  Time  called  him  forth,  the  Time  did 
everything,  he  nothing  —  but  what  we  the  little  critic 
could  have  done  too  !  This  seems  to  me  but  melancholy 
work.  The  Time  call  forth  ?  Alas,  we  have  known 
Times  call  loudly  enough  for  their  great  man  ;  but  not 
find  him  when  they  called !  He  was  not  there  ;  Provi- 
dence had  not  sent  him ;  the  Time,  calling  its  loudest, 
had  to  go  down  to  confusion  and  wreck  because  he 
would  not  come  when  called. 

For  if  we  will  think  of  it,  no  Time  need  have  gone 
to  ruin,  could  it  have  found  a  man  great  enough,  a 
man  wise  and  good  enough  :  wisdom  to  discern  tridy 
what  the  Time  wanted,  valour  to  lead  it  on  the  right 
road  thither ;  these  are  the  salvation  of  any  Time. 
But  I  liken  common  languid  Times,  vdth  their  un- 
belief, distress,  perplexity,  with  their  languid  doubting 
characters  and  embarrassed  circumstances,  impotently 
crumbling  down  into  ever  worse  distress  towards  final 
ruin ;  —  all  this  I  liken  to  dry  dead  fuel,  waiting  for 
the  lightning  out  of  Heaven  that  shall  kindle  it.  The 
great  man,  with  his  free  force  direct  out  of  God's  o\m. 
hand,  is  the  lightning.  His  word  is  the  wise  healing 
word  which  all  can  believe  in.  All  blazes  round  him 
now,  when  he  has  once  struck  on  it,  into  fire  like  his 
own.  The  dry  nioulderiug  sticks  are  thought  to  have 
called  him  forth.  They  did  want  him  greatly ;  but  as 
to  calling:  him  forth  —  !  —  Those  are  critics  of  small 


18  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

vision,  I  think,  who  cry :  "  See,  is  it  not  the  sticks  that 
made  the  fire  ?  "  No  sadder  proof  can  he  given  by  a 
man  of  his  own  littleness  than  disbelief  in  great  men. 
There  is  no  sadder  symptom  of  a  generation  than  such 
general  blindness  to  the  spiritual  lightning,  with  faitli 
only  in  the  heap  of  barren  dead  fuel.  It  is  the  last 
consummation  of  unbelief.  In  all  epochs  of  the  world's 
history,  we  shall  fuid  the  Great  Man  to  have  been  the 
indispensable  saviour  of  his  epoch;  —  the  lightning, 
without  which  the  fuel  never  would  have  burnt.  The 
History  of  the  World,  I  said  already,  was  the  Biogra- 
phy of  Great  Men. 

Such  small  critics  do  what  they  can  to  promote  un- 
belief and  universal  spiritual  paralysis :  but  happily 
they  cannot  always  completely  succeed.  In  all  times  it 
is  possible  for  a  man  to  arise  great  enough  to  feel  that 
they  and  their  doctrines  are  chimeras  ^  and  cobwebs. 
And  what  is  notable,  in  no  time  whatever  can  they 
entirely  eradicate  out  of  living  men's  hearts  a  certain 
altogether  peculiar  reverence  for  Great  Men  ;  genuine 
admiration,  loyalty,  adoration,  however  dim  and  per- 
verted it  may  be.  Hero-worship  endiires  forever  while 
man  endures.  Boswell  venerates  his  Johnson,  right 
truly  even  in  the  Eighteenth  century.  The  unbeliev- 
ing French  believe  in  their  Voltaire ;  ^  and  burst-out 

^  A  fire-breathing  monster  of  Greek  mythology,  with  a  lion's 
head,  a  goat's  body,  and  a  serpent's  tail,  or  sometimes  repre- 
sented as  having  the  heads  of  these  tliree  animals.  A  favorite 
term  of  Carlyle's  for  an  imposing-looking  inanity  or  unreal- 
ity. 

2  Witty  satirist,  poet  and  dramatist,  and  miscellaneous  prose- 
writer  (1694-1778).  Most  of  the  matters  alluded  to  in  the  rest 
of  the  paragraph  are  narrated  in  Carlyle's  Essay  on  Voltaire. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  19 

round  him  into  very  curious  Hero-worship,  in  that  last 
act  of  his  life  when  they  '  stifle  ]x\\\\  under  roses.'  It  has 
always  seemed  to  me  extremely  curious  this  of  Voltaire. 
Truly,  if  Christianity  be  the  highest  instance  of  Hero- 
worship,  then  we  may  find  here  in  Voltaireism  one  of 
the  lowest !  He  whose  life  was  that  of  a  kind  of  An- 
tichrist, does  again  on  this  side  exhibit  a  curious  con- 
trast. No  people  ever  were  so  little  prone  to  admire 
at  all  as  those  French  of  Voltaire.  Persiflage  ^  was 
the  character  of  their  whole  mind  ;  adoration  had  no- 
where a  place  in  it.  Yet  see  !  The  old  man  of  Ferney  ^ 
comes  up  to  Paris  ;  an  old,  tottering,  infirm  man  of 
eighty-four  years.  They  feel  that  he  too  is  a  kind  of 
Hero  ;  that  he  has  spent  his  life  in  opposing  error  and 
injustice,  delivering  Calases,^  unmasking  hypocrites  in 
high  places ;  —  in  shoi't  that  he  too,  though  in  a  strange 
way,  has  fought  like  a  valiant  man.  They  feel  witlial 
that,  if  persiflage  be  the  great  thing,  there  never  was 
such  ?ipersifleur.  He  is  the  realised  ideal  of  every  one 
of  them  ;  the  thing  they  are  all  wanting  to  be  ;  of  all 
Frenchmen  the  most  French.  He  is  properly  their 
god,  —  such  god  as  they  are  fit  for.  Accordingly  all 
persons,  from  the  Queen  Antoinette  to  the  Douanier  * 
at  the  Porte  St.  Denis,  do  they  not  worship  him  ? 
People  of  quality  disguise  themselves  as  tavern -waiters. 
The  Maitre  de  Poste,  with  a  broad  oath,  orders  his 

^  Flippant  banter,  or  quizzing. 

^  In  eastern  France  near  Geneva,  home  of  Voltaire  from  1758. 

^  Jean  Galas,  victim  of  religions  hatred,  was  executed  un- 
justly (1762)  for  murder.  His  widow  fled  to  Switzerland,  and 
won  the  sympathy  of  Voltaire,  who  vindicated  the  reputation  of 
the  family. 

■*  Custom-house  officer. 


20  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

Postillion,  "  Va  bon  train  ;  ^  thou  art  driving  M.  de 
Voltaire."  At  Paris  his  carriage  is  '  the  nucleus  of 
a  comet,  whose  train  fills  whole  streets.'  The  ladies 
pluck  a  hair  or  two  from  his  fur,  to  keep  it  as  a  sacred 
relic.  There  was  nothing  highest,  beautifulest,  noblest 
in  all  France,  that  did  not  feel  this  man  to  be  higher, 
beautifuler,  nobler. 

Yes,  from  Norse  Odin  to  English  Samuel  Johnson, 
from  the  divine  Founder  of  Christianity  to  the  with- 
ered Pontiff  of  Encyclopedism,2  in  all  times  and 
places,  the  Hero  has  been  worshipped.  It  will  ever  be 
so.  We  all  love  great  men ;  love,  venerate  and  bow 
down  submissive  before  great  men :  nay  can  we  hon- 
estly bow  down  to  anything  else  ?  Ah,  does  not  every 
true  man  feel  that  he  is  hin\self  made  higher  by  doing 
reverence  to  what  is  really  above  him  ?  No  nobler  or 
more  blessed  feeling  dwells  in  man's  heart.  And  to 
me  it  is  very  cheering  to  consider  that  no  sceptical 
logic,  or  general  triviality,  insincerity  and  aridity  of 
any  Time  and  its  influences  can  destroy  this  noble  in- 
born loyalty  and  worship  that  is  in  man.  In  times  of 
unbelief,  which  soon  have  to  become  times  of  revolu- 
tion, much  down-rushing,  sorrowful  decay  and  ruin 
is  visible  to  everybody.  For  myself,  in  these  days,  I 
seem  to  see  in  this  indestructibility  of  Hero-worship 
the  everlasting  adamant  lower  than  which  the  con- 
fused wreck  of  revolutionary  things  cannot  fall.  The 
confused  wreck  of  things  crumbling  and  even  crashing 

1  Go  fast. 

2  Voltaire  contributed  to  the  Encyclopedle  of  Diderot  and 
others,  which  was  made  the  vehicle  of  radical  and  materialistic 
philosophical  views. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  21 

and  tumLling  all  round  us  in  these  revolutionary  ages, 
will  get  down  so  far ;  no  farther.  It  is  an  eternal 
corner-stone,  from  which  they  can  begin  to  build  them- 
selves up  again.  That  man,  in  some  sense  or  other, 
worships  Heroes  ;  that  we  all  of  us  reverence  and  must 
ever  reverence  Great  Men  :  this  is,  to  me,  the  living- 
rock  amid  all  rusliings-down  whatsoever ;  —  the  one 
fixed  point  in  modern  revolutionary  historj',  otherwise 
as  if  bottomless  and  shoreless. 

So  much  of  truth,  only  under  an  ancient  obsolete 
vesture,  but  the  spirit  of  it  still  true,  do  I  find  in  the 
Paganism  of  old  nations.  Nature  is  still  divine,  the 
revelation  of  the  workings  of  God ;  the  Hero  is  still 
worshipable  :  this,  mider  poor  cramped  incipient  forms, 
is  what  all  Pagan  religions  have  struggled,  as  they 
could,  to  set  forth.  I  think  Scandinavian  Paganism, 
to  us  here,  is  more  interesting  than  any  other.  It  is, 
for  one  thing,  the  latest ;  it  continued  in  these  regions 
of  Europe  till  the  eleventh  century :  eight-hundred 
years  ago  the  Norwegians  were  still  worshippers  of 
Odin.  It  is  interesting  also  as  the  creed  of  our  fa- 
thers ;  the  men  whose  blood  still  runs  in  our  veins, 
whom  doubtless  we  still  resemble  in  so  many  ways. 
Strange :  they  did  believe  that,  while  we  believe  so 
differently.  Let  us  look  a  little  at  this  poor  Norse 
creed,  for  many  reasons.  We  hav^e  tolerable  means  to 
do  it  ;  for  there  is  another  point  of  interest  in  these 
Scandinavian  mythologies :  that  they  have  been  pre- 
•served  so  well. 

In  that  strange  island  Iceland,  —  burst-up,  the 
geologists  say,  by  fire  from  the  bottom  of  the  sea ;  a 


22  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

wild  land  of  barrenness  and  lava;  swallowed  many 
months  of  every  year  in  black  tempests,  yet  with  a 
wild  gleaming  beauty  in  summer-time ;  towering  up 
there,  stern  and  grim,  in  the  North  Ocean  ;  with  its 
snow  jokuls,!  roaring  geysers,  sulphur-pools  and  horrid 
volcanic  chasms,  like  the  waste  chaotic  battle-field  of 
Frost  and  Fire  ;  —  where  of  all  placed  we  least  looked 
for  Literature  or  written  memorials,  the  record  of 
these  things  was  written  down.  On  the  seaboard  of 
this  wild  land  is  a  rim  of  grassy  country,  where  cattle 
can  subsist,  and  men  by  means  of  them  and  of  what 
the  sea  yields  ;  and  it  seems  they  were  poetic  men 
these,  men  who  had  deep  thoughts  in  them,  and  uttered 
musically  their  thoughts.  Much  would  be  lost,  had 
Iceland  not  been  burst-up  from  the  sea,  not  been  dis- 
covered by  the  Northmen !  The  old  Norse  Poets  were 
many  of  them  natives  of  Iceland. 

Sseniund,  one  of  the  earl}"-  Christian  Priests  there, 
who  perhaps  had  a  lingering  fondness  for  Paganism, 
collected  certain  of  their  old  Pagan  songs,  just  about 
becoming  obsolete  then,  —  Poems  or  Chants  of  a 
mythic,  prophetic,  mostly  all  of  a  religious  character : 
that  is  what  Norse  critics  call  the  Elder  or  Poetic 
EddaP'  Edda^  a  word  of  uncertain  etymology,  is 
thought  to  signify  Ancestress.    Snorro  Sturleson,-^  an 

^  Glaciers. 

2  Misnamed  ^'  Scemund's  Edda,"  by  its  discoverer  in  Iceland, 
1643.  The  collection  was  made  by  an  unknown  Icelander  after 
the  death  of  Sjemund  (1056-1133),  the  priest  and  scholar.  The 
name  Edda  (Art  of  Poetry)  does  not  properly  belong  to  this 
book,  though  it  does  to  Snorro's. 

^  A  poet,  historian,  and  grammarian  (1178-1241).  He  com- 
piled the  Younger  Edda  as  a  manual  of  mythology  and  rules  of 
poetry  for  the  use  of  young  verse-makers. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  23 

Iceland  gentleman,  an  extremely  notable  personage, 
educated  by  this  Saemiind's  grandson,  took  in  hand 
next,  near  a  century  afterwards,  to  put  together,  among 
several  other  books  he  wrote,  a  kind  of  Prose  Synopsis 
of  the  whole  Mythology  ;  elucidated  by  new  fragments 
of  traditionary  verse.  A  work  constructed  really  with 
great  ingenuity,  native  talent,  what  one  might  call  un- 
conscious art ;  altogether  a  perspicuous  clear  work, 
pleasant  reading  still :  this  is  the  Younger  or  Prose 
Edda.  By  these  and  the  numerous  other  Sagas, 
mostly  Icelandic,  with  the  commentaries,  Icelandic  or 
not,  which  go  on  zealously  in  the  North  to  this  day,  it 
is  possible  to  gain  some  direct  insight  even  yet ;  and 
see  that  old  Norse  system  of  Belief,  as  it  were,  face 
to  face.  Let  us  forget  that  it  is  erroneous  Religion ; 
let  us  look  at  it  as  old  Thought,  and  try  if  we  cannot 
sympathise  with  it  somewhat. 

The  primary  characteristic  of  this  old  Northland 
Mythology  I  find  to  be  Impersonation  of  the  visible 
workings  of  Nature.  Earnest  simple  recognition  of 
the  workings  of  Physical  Nature,  as  a  thing  wholly 
miraculous,  stupendous  and  divine.  What  we  now 
lecture  of  as  Science,  they  wondered  at,  and  fell  down 
in  awe  before,  as  Religion.  The  dark  hostile  Powers 
of  Nature  they  figure  to  themselves  as  ''Jotuns,'  ^ 
Giants,  huge  shaggy  beings  of  a  demonic  character. 
Frost,  Fire,  Sea-tempest ;  these  are  Jotuns.  The 
friendly  Powers  again,  as  Summer-heat,  the  Sun,  are 
Gods.  The  empire  of  this  Universe  is  divided  between 
these  two  ;  they  dwell  apart,  in  perennial  internecine 
feud.  The  Gods  dwell  above  in  Asgard,  the  Garden 
^  Prou.  Yotun  (ci  =  u  iu  fur). 


24  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

of  the  Asen,  or  Divinities ;  Jotunheim,  a  distant  dark 
chaotic  land,  is  the  home  of  the  JiJtuns. 

Curious  all  this ;  and  not  idle  or  inane,  if  we  will 
look  at  the  foundation  of  it !  The  power  of  Fire,  or 
Flame,  for  instance,  which  we  designate  by  some  triv- 
ial chemical  name,  thereb}^  hiding  from  ourselves  the 
essential  character  of  wonder  that  dwells  in  it  as 
in  all  things,  is  with  these  old  Northmen,  Loke,^  a 
most  swift  subtle  Demon,  of  the  brood  of  the  Jotuns. 
The  savages  of  the  Ladrones  ^  Islands  too  (say, some 
Spanish  voyagers)  thought  Fire,  which  they  never 
had  seen  before,  was  a  devil  or  god,  that  bit  you 
sharply  when  you  touched  it,  and  that  lived  upon  dry  ' 
wood.  From  us  too  no  Chemistry,  if  it  had  not  Stu- 
pidity to  help  it,  would  hide  that  Flame  is  a  wonder. 
What  is  Flame? — Frost  the  old  Norse  Seer  discerns 
to  be  a  monstrous  hoary  Jotun,  the  Giant  Thrym, 
Hnjm ;  or  Rime,  the  old  word  now  ueai'ly  obsolete 
here,  but  still  used  in  Scotland  to  signify  hoar-frost. 
Rime  was  not  then  as  now  a  dead  chemical  thing,  ^ 
but  a  living  Jotun  or  Devil ;  the  monstrous  Jotun 
Rime  di^ove  home  his  Horses  at  night,  sat  'combing 
their  manes,'  —  which  Horses  were  Hail-Clouds,  or 
fleet  Frost-Winds.  His  Cows — No,  not  his,  but  a 
kinsman's,  the  Giant  Hymir's  Cows  are  Icebergs  : 
this  Hyniir  '  looks  at  the  rocks '  with  his  devil-eye, 
and  they  split  in  the  glance  of  it. 

Thunder  was  not  then  mere  Electricity,  vitreous 
or  resinous ;  it   was  the  God  Donner   (Thunder)  or 

^  The  devil,  par  excellence,  of  the  Norse  mythology.  See  later 
notes.  He  was  adopted  by  the  gods,  and  became  the  foster-bro- 
ther of  Odin.        ^  In  the  Pacific,  discovered  by  Magellan,  1521. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  25 

Tlior,^ — God  also  of  beneficent  Summer-heat.  The 
tliimJer  was  his  wrath ;  the  g-athering  of  the  black 
clouds  is  the  drawing-down  of  Thor's  angi-y  brows ; 
the  fire-bolt  bursting  out  of  Heaven  is  the  all-rending 
Hammer  flung  from  the  hand  of  Thor :  he  urges  his 
loud  chariot  over  the  mountain-tops,  —  that  is  the 
peal;  wrathful  he  'blows  in  his  red  beard,'  —  that 
is  the  rustlinfj  stormblast  before  the  thunder  bejjin. 
Balder  2  again,  the  White  God,  the  beautiful,  the  just 
and  benignant  (whom  the  early  Christian  Mission- 
aries found  to  resemble  Christ),  is  the  Sun,  —  beau- 
tifulest  of  visible  things ;  wondrous  too,  and  divine 
still,  after  all  our  Astronomies  and  Almanacs !  But 
perhaps  the  notablest  god  we  hear  tell-of  is  one  of 
whom  Grimm  tjie  German  Et}anologist  finds  trace : 
the  God  Wiinsck,  or  Wish.  The  God  Wish ;  who 
could  give  us  all  that  we  icished  !  Is  not  this  the  sin- 
cerest  and  yet  rudest  voice  of  the  spirit  of  man  ?  The 
rudest  ideal  that  man  ever  formed  ;  which  still  shows 
itself  in  the  latest  forms  of  our  spiritual  cultui-e. 
Higher  considerations  have  to  teach  us  that  the  God 
Wish  is  not  the  true  God. 

Of  the  other  Gods  or  Jotuns  I  will  mention  only 
for  etymology's  sake,  that  Sea-tempest  is  the  Jotun 
Aegir,  a  very  dangerous  Jotun  ;  —  and  now  to  this 
day,  on  our  river  Trent,  as  I  learn,  the  Nottingham 
bargemen,  when  the  River  is  in  a  certain  flooded  state 
(a  kind  of  backwater,  or  eddying  swirl  it  has,  very 
dangerous  to  them),  call  it  Eager  ;^   they  cry  -out, 

1  The  son  of  Odin.   Tlaursday  =  Thor's  day. 

2  See  p.  48,  n.  1. 

'  The  etymology  of  eager  (tidal  wave)  is  uncertain;  it  is  not 


26  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

"  Have  a  care,  there  is  the  Eager  coming !  "  Curious  ; 
that  word  surviving,  like  the  peak  of  a  submerged 
world  !  The  oldest  Nottingham  bargemen  had  believed 
in  the  God  Aegir.  Indeed  our  Eno-lish  blood  too  in 
good  part  is  Danish,  Norse  ;  or  rather,  at  bottom, 
Danish  and  Norse  and  Saxon  have  no  distinction,  ex- 
cept a  superficial  one,  —  as  of  Heathen  and  Christian, 
or  the  like.  But  all  over  our  Island  we  are  mingled 
largely  with  Danes  proper,  —  from  the  incessant  in- 
vasions there  were :  and  this,  of  course,  in  a  greater 
proportion  along  the  east  coast ;  and  greatest  of  all, 
as  I  find,  in  the  North  Country.  From  the  Hmnber 
upwards,  all  over  Scotland,  the  Speech  of  the  com- 
mon people  is  stiU  in  a  singular  degree  Icelandic  ;  its 
Germanism  has  still  a  peculiar  Norse  tinge.  They  too 
are  '  Normans,'  Noi'thmen,  —  if  that  be  any  great 
beauty !  — 

Of  the  chief  god,  Odin,  we  shall  speak  by  and  by. 
Mark  at  present  so  much  ;  what  the  essence  of  Scan- 
dinavian and  indeed  of  all  Paganism  is  :  a  recognition 
of  the  forces  of  Nature  as  godlike,  stupendous,  per- 
sonal Agencies,  —  as  Gods  and  Demons.  Not  incon- 
ceivable to  us.  It  is  the  infant  Thought  of  man  ojDcn- 
ing  itseK,  with  awe  and  wonder,  on  this  ever-stupendous 
Universe.  To  me  there  is  in  the  Norse  System  some- 
thing very  genuine,  very  great  and  manlike.  A  broad 
simplicity,  rusticity,  so  very  different  from  the  light 
gracefulness  of  the  old  Greek  Paganism,  distinguishes 
this  Scandinavian  System.  It  is  Thought ;  the  genuine 
Thought  of  deep,  rude,  earnest  minds,  fairly  opened 

from  the  name  of  the  sea  god.  See  New  Eng.  Diet.  Aegir  is  the 
wealthiest  of  the  giauts. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  27 

to  the  things  about  them  ;  a  face-to-face  and  heart-to- 
heart  inspection  of  the  things,  —  the  first  characteristic 
of  all  good  Thought  in  all  times.  Not  graceful  light- 
ness, half-sport,  as  in  the  Greek  Paganism ;  a  certain 
homely  truthfulness  and  rustic  strength,  a  great  rude 
sincerity,  discloses  itself  here.  It  is  strange,  after  our 
beautiful  Apollo  statues  and  clear  smiling  mytlmses,  to 
come  do\vn  upon  the  Norse  Gods  'brewing  ale '  to  hold 
their  feast  with  Aegir,  the  Sea-Jotun  ;  sending  out 
Thor  to  get  the  caldron  for  them  in  the  Jotun  country  ; 
Thor,  after  many  adventures,  clapping  the  Pot  on  his 
head,  like  a  huge  hat,  and  walking  off  with  it,  —  quite 
lost  in  it,  the  ears  of  the  Pot  reaching  down  to  his  heels ! 
A  kind  of  vacant  hugeness,  large  awkward  gianthood, 
characterises  that  Norse  System  ;  enormous  force,  as 
yet  altogether  untutored,  stalking  helpless  with  large 
uncertain  strides.  Consider  only  their  primary  my  thus 
of  the  Creation.  The  Gods,  having  got  the  Giant 
Ymer  slain,  a  Giant  made  by  '  warm  wind,'  and  much 
confused  work,  out  of  the  conflict  of  Frost  and  Fire,  — 
determined  on  constructing  a  world  with  him.  His 
blood  made  the  Sea ;  his  flesh  was  the  >  Land,  the 
Rocks  his  bones  ;  of  his  eyebrows  they  formed  Asgard 
their  Gods'-dwelling ;  his  skull  was  the  great  blue 
vault  of  Immensity,  and  the  brains  of  it  became  the 
Clouds.  What  a  Hyper-Brobdingnagian  ^  business ! 
Untamed  Thought,  great,  giantlike,  enormous  ;  —  to  be 
tamed   in  due  time  into  the  compact  greatness,  not 

^  Alluding  to  the  land  of  Brobdingnag,  peopled  by  giants, 
in  Gulliver's  Travels  (1726),  by  Jonathan  Swift  (1667-1745). 
During  Gulliver's  stay  in  Brobdingnag  he  was  cared  for  by 
Glumdalclitch,  his  "little  nurse,"  a  child  of  nine  years,  "not 
above  forty  feet  high,  being  little  for  her  age." 


28  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

giantlike,  but  godlike  and  stronger  tlian  gianthood,  of 
the  Shakspeares,  the  Goethes !  —  Spiritually  as  well 
as  bodily  these  men  are  our  progenitors. 

1  like,  too,  that  representation  they  have  of  the 
Tree  Igdrasil.  All  Life  is  figured  by  them  as  a  Tree. 
Igdrasil,  the  Ash-ti^ee  of  Existence,  has  its  roots  deep- 
down  in  the  kingdoms  of  Hela  or  Death  ;  its  truidc 
reaches  up  heaven -high,  spreads  its  boughs  over  the 
whole  Universe :  it  is  the  Tree  of  Existence.  At  the 
foot  of  it,  in  the  Death-kingdom,  sit  three  Nomas, 
Fates,  —  the  Past,  Present,  Future  ;  watering  its  roots 
from  the  Sacred  Well.^  Its  '  boughs,'  with  their  bud- 
dings and  disleafings,  —  events,  things  suffered,  things 
done,  catastrophes,  —  stretch  through  all  lands  and 
times.  Is  not  every  leaf  of  it  a  biography,  every  fibre 
there  an  act  or  word  ?  Its  boughs  are  Histories  of  Na- 
tions. The  rustle  of  it  is  the  noise  of  Hiunan  Existence, 
onwards  from  of  old.  It  grows  there,  the  breath  of 
Human  Passion  rustling  through  it ;  —  or  storm  tost,, 
the  stormwind  howling  through  it  like  the  voice  of  all 
the  gods.  It  is  Igdrasil,  the  Tree  of  Existence.  It  is 
the  past,  the  present,  and  the  future  ;  what  was  done, 
what  is  doing,  what  will  be  done  ;  '  the  infinite  con- 
jugation of  the  verb  To  do.^  Considering  how  hu- 
man things  circulate,  each  inextricably  in  communion 
with  all,  —  how  the  word  I  speak  to  you  today  is  bor- 
rowed, not  from  Ulfila^  the  Moesogoth  only,  but  from 

^  The  fountain  of  wisdom,  presided  over  by  Mimer,  the  wisest 
of  the  giants.  In  the  dawn  of  time  Odin  pawned  one  of  his  eyes 
for  a  drink  from  this  well. 

2  Born  c.  310  ;  Bisliop  of  the  Goths  (341),  for  whom  he  trans- 
lated the  Bible  into  Gothic  ;  removed  (348)  to  Mcesia,  south  of 
tlie  Danube  :  died  e.  380. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  29 

all  men  since  the  first  man  began  to  speak,  —  I  find  no 
similitude  so  true  as  this  of  a  Tree.  Beautiful ;  alto- 
gether beautiful  and  great.  The  '  Machine  of  the  Uni- 
verse,' 1  —  alas,  do  but  think  of  that  in  contrast ! 

Well,  it  is  strange  enough  this  old  Norse  view  of 
Nature ;  different  enough  from  what  we  believe  of  Na- 
ture. Whence  it  specially  came,  one  would  not  like  to 
be  compelled  to  say  very  minutely  !  One  thing  we  may 
say  :  It  came  from  the  thoughts  of  Norse  men ;  — 
from  the  thought,  above  all,  of  iha  first  Norse  man  who 
had  an  original  power  of  thinking.  The  First  Norse 
'  man  of  genius,'  as  we  should  call  him  !  Innumerable 
men  had  passed  by,  across  this  Universe,  with  a  dumb 
vague  wonder,  such  as  the  very  animals  may  feel ;  or 
with  a  painful,  fruitlessly  inquiring  wonder,  such  as 
men  only  feel ;  —  till  the  great  Thinker  came,  the  ori- 
ginal man,  the  Seer ;  whose  shaped  spoken  Thought 
awakes  the  slumbering  capability  of  all  into  Thought. 
It  is  ever  the  way  with  the  Thinker,  the  spiritual  Hero. 
What  he  says,  all  men  were  not  far  from  saying,  were 
longing  to  say.  The  Thoughts  of  aU  start  up,  as  from 
painful  enchanted  sleep,  round  his  Thought ;  answer- 
ing to  it,  Yes,  even  so  !  Joyful  to  men  as  the  dawn- 
ing of  day  from  night ;  —  is  it  not,  indeed,  the  awak- 
ening for  them  from  no-being  into  being,  from  death 
into  life  ?  We  still  honour  such  a  man  ;  call  him  Poet, 
Genius,  and  so  forth :  but  to  these  wild  men  he  was 
a  very  magician,  a  worker  of»  miraculous  unexpected 
blessing  for  them  ;  a  Prophet,  a  God !  —  Thought  once 
awakened  does  not  again  slumber ;  unfolds  itself  into 
1  See  pp.  104,  238. 


30  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

a  System  of  Thought ;  grows,  in  man  after  man, 
generation  after  generation,  - —  till  its  full  stature  is 
reached,  and  such  System  of  Thought  can  grow  no 
farther,  but  must  gire  place  to  another. 

For  the  Norse  people,  the  Man  now  named  Odin, 
and  Chief  Norse  God,  we  fancy,  was  such  a  man.  A 
Teacher,  and  Captain  of  soul  and  of  body  ;  a  Hero, 
of  worth  z/;aneasurable  ;  admiration  for  whom,  tran- 
scending the  known  bounds,  became  adoration.^  Has 
he  not  the  power  of  articulate  Thinking ;  and  many 
other  powers,  as  yet  miraculous?  So,  with  boundless 
gratitude,  would  the  rude  Norse  heart  feel.  Has  he 
not  solved  for  them  the  sphinx-enigma  of  this  Uni- 
verse ;  given  assurance  to  them  of  their  own  destiny 
there?  By  him  they  know  now  what  they  have  to  do 
here,  what  to  look  for  hereafter.  Existence  has  be- 
come articulate,  melodious  by  him  ;  he  first  has  made 
Life  alive !  —  We  may  call  this  Odin,  the  origin  of 
Norse  Mythology:  Odin,  or  whatever  name  the  First 
Norse  Thinker  bore  while  he  was  a  man  among  men. 
His  view  of  the  Universe  once  promulgated,  a  like 
view  starts  into  being  in  all  minds ;  grows,  keeps 
ever  growing,  while  it  continues  credible  there.  In  all 
minds  it  lay  written,  but  invisibly,  as  in  sympathetic 
ink ;  at  his  word  it  starts  into  visibility  in  all.  Nay, 
in  every  epoch  of  the  world,  the  great  event,  parent 
of  all  others,  is  it  not  the  arrival  of  a  Thinker  in  the 
world  ?  — 

One  other  thing  we  nUist  not  forget :  it  will  explain, 
a  little,  the  confusion  of  these  Norse  Eddas.  They  are 
not  one  coherent  System  of  Thought :  but  properly  the 
^  See  p.  12,  end. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  31 

summation  of  several  successive  systems.  All  this  of 
the  old  Norse  Belief  which  is  fluug-out  for  us,  in  one 
level  of  distance  in  the  Edda,  like  a  picture  painted 
on  the  same  canvas,  does  not  at  all  stand  so  in  the 
reality.  It  stands  rather  at  all  manner  of  distances 
and  depths,  of  successive  generations  since  the  Belief 
first  began.  All  Scandinavian  thinkers,  since  the  first 
of  them,  contributed  to  that  Scandinavian  System  of 
■  Thoiight ;  in  ever-new  elaboration  and  addition,  it  is 
the  combined  work  of  them  all.  What  history  it  had, 
how  it  changed  from  shape  to  shape,  by  one  thinker's 
contribution  after  another,  till  it  got  to  the  fidl  final 
shape  we  see  it  under  in  the  Edda,  no  man  will  now 
ever  know  :  its  Councils  of  Trebisond,i  Councils  of 
Trent,2  Athanasiuses,^  Dantes,  Luthers,  are  sunk  with- 
out echo  in  the  dark  night !  Only  that  it  had  such  a 
history  we  can  all  know.  Wheresoever  a  thinker  ap- 
peared, there  in  the  thing  he  thought-of  was  a  contri- 
bution, accession,  a  change  or  revolution  made.  Alas, 
the  grandest  '  revolution '  of  all,  the  ome  made  by  the 
man  Odin  himself,  is  not  this  too  sunk  for  us  like  the 
rest !  Of  Odin  what  history  ?  Strange  rather  to  re- 
flect that  he  hud  a  history  !    That  this  Odin,  in  his 

*  On  southeast  coast  of  the  Black  Sea,  the  Trapesus  of  Xeno- 
phon's  Ten  Thousand.  History  does  not  record  any  Council  of 
Trehisond. 

2  The  nineteenth  Ecumenical  (General)  Council  of  the  Church, 
held  at  Trent,  in  the  Austrian  Tyrol,  1545-1563.  It  settled  some 
important  matters  of  theological  doctrine  and  church  reform. 
See  p.  172,  n.  1. 

^  One  of  the  most  celebrated  Greek  Fathers  of  the  Church 
(c.  296-373),  Bishop  of  Alexandria.  In  constant  conflict  with 
various  factions  in  the  Church,  he  was  deposed  and  restored  sev- 
eral times. 


32  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

wild  Norse  vesture,  with  his  wild  beard  and  eyes,  his 
rude  Norse  speech  and  ways,  was  a  man  like  us  ;  with 
our  sorrows,  joys,  with  our  limbs,  features  ;  —  intrin- 
sically all  one  as  we  :  and  did  such  a  work !  But  the 
work,  much  of  it,  has  perished  ;  the  worker,  all  to  the 
name.  "  WednesA^y  "  men  will  say  tomorrow  ;  Odin's 
day  I  Of  Odin  there  exists  no  history ;  no  document 
of  it ;  no  guess  about  it  worth  repeating. 

Snorro  indeed,  in  the  quietest  manner,  almost  in  a 
brief  business  style,  writes  down  in  his  Tlcimshringla^ 
how  Odin  was  a  heroic  Prince,  in  the  Black-Sea  re- 
gion, with  Twelve  Peers,  and  a  great  people  straitened 
for  room.  How  he  led  these  Asen^  (Asiatics)  of  his 
out  of  Asia ;  settled  them  in  the  North  parts  of  Europe, 
by  warlike  conquest ;  invented  Letters,  Poetry  and  so 
forth,  —  and  came  by  and  by  to  be  worshipped  as  Chief 
God  by  these  Scandinavians,  his  Twelve  Peers  made 
into  Twelve  Sons  of  his  own,  Gods  like  himself :  Snorro 
has  no  doubt  of  this.  Saxo  Grammaticus,^  a  very  curi- 
ous Northman  of  that  same  century,  is  still  more  unhes- 
itating; scruples  not  to  find  out  a  historical  fact  in 
every  individual  mythus,  and  writes  it  (\o\vYt.  as  a  terres- 
trial event  in  Denmark  or  elsewhere.  Torfa;us,*  learned 
and  cautious,  some  centuries  later,  assigns  by  calcu- 

1  Snorro's  Saga  or  Story  of  the  Kings  of  Norway  to  1177, 
called  Heimskringla,  from  its  opening  words. 

2  See  pp.  23,  24. 

'  Died  soon  after  1200.  lie  ^v^ote  a  Danish  History,  Ge/tta 
Danorum,  to  the  year  1186.  The  first  eight  books  present  the 
stories  of  Norse  divinities  as  of  kings  and  heroes  of  antiquity. 
See  p.  50. 

*  Born  in  Iceland,  1636.  A  scholarly  antiquary,  historian,  and 
collector  of  the  saga  manuscripts.    Died  1719. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  33 

latioi  a  date  for  it :  OJin,  be  says,  came  into  Europe 
about  tbe  Year  70  before  Cbrist.  Of  all  wbicb,  as 
grounded  on  mere  uncertainties,  found  to  be  untenable 
now,  I  need  say  nothing.  Far,  very  far  beyond  the 
Year  70  !  Odin's  date,  adventures,  whole  terrestrial 
history,  figure  and  environment  are  sunk  from  us  for 
ever  into  unknown  thousands  of  years. 

.  Nay  Grimm,^  the  German  Antiquary,  goes  so  far  as 
to  deny  that  any  man  Odin  ever  existed.  He  proves 
it  by  etymology.  The  word  Wuotan,  which  is  the  ori- 
ginal form  of  Odin,  a  word  spread,  as  name  of  their 
chief  Divinity,  over  all  the  Teutonic  Nations  every- 
where ;  this  word,  which  connects  itself,  according  to 
Grimm,  with  the  Latin  t^adere,  with  the  English  loade 
and  suchlike,  —  means  primarily  Movement,  Source 
of  Movement,  Power  ;  and  is  the  fit  name  of  the  high- 
est god,  not  of  any  man.  The  word  signifies  Divinity, 
he  says,  among  the  old  Saxon,  German  and  all  Teu- 
tonic Nations  ;  the  adjectives  formed  from  it  all  signify 
divine,  supreme,  or  something  pertaining  to  the  chief 
god.  Like  enough  !  We  must  bow  to  Grimm  in  mat- 
ters etymological.  Let  us  consider  it  fixed  that  Wvo- 
tan  means  Wading,  force  of  Movement.  And  now 
still,  what  hinders  it  from  being  the  name  of  a  Heroic 
Man  and  Mover,  as  well  as  of  a  god?  As  for  the  ad- 
jectives, and  words  formed'  from  it,  —  did  not  the 
Spaniards  in  their  universal  admiration  for  Lope,^  get 

1  Jakob  Grimm  (1785-1863),  one  of  the  Grimm  brothers  of 
fairy-tale  fame.  Carlyle  cites  here  from  his  Teutonic  Mythology 
(1882),  i,  131.  • 

2  Lope  de  Vega  (1562-1635),  Spanisli  dramatist,  author  of 
about  eighteen  hundred  plays,  besides  poems,  romances,  and 
shorter  dramatic  pieces. 


34  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

into  the  habit  of  saying  'a  Lope  flower,'  'a  Lope  dcnna,^ 
if  the  flower  or  woman  were  of  surpassing  beauty? 
Had  this  lasted,  Lope  would  have  grown,  in  Spain,  to 
be  an  adjective  signifying  godlike  also.  Indeed,  Adam 
Smith,^  in  his  Essay  on  Language^  surmises  that  all 
adjectives  whatsoever  were  formed  precisely  in  that 
way :  some  very  green  thing,  chiefly  notable  for  its 
greenness,  got  the  appellative  name  Green^  and  then 
the  next  thing  remarkable  for  that  quality,  a  tree  for 
instance,  was  named  the  green  tree,  —  as  we  still  say 
'  the  steam  coach,'  '  four-horse  coach,'  or  the  like.  All 
primary  adjectives,  according  to  Smith,  were  formed 
in  this  way  ;  were  at  first  substantives  and  things. 
We  cannot  annihilate  a  man  for  etymologies  like  that ! 
Surely  there  was  a  First  Teacher  and  Captain  ;  surely 
there  must  have  been  an  Odin,  palpable  to  the  sense 
at  one  time ;  no  adjective,  but  a  real  Hero  of  flesh 
and  blood !  The  voice  of  all  tradition,  history  or  echo 
of  history,  agrees  with  all  that  thought  will  teach  one 
about  it,  to  assure  us  of  this. 

How  the  man  Odin  came  to  be  considered  a  god^ 
the  chief  god  ?  —  that  surely  is  a  question  which  no- 
body would  wish  to  dogmatise  upon.  I  have  said, 
his  people  knew  no  limits  to  their  admiration  of 
him  ;  they  had  as  yet  no  scale  to  measure  admiration 
by.  Fancy  your  own  generous  heart' s-love  of  some 
greatest  man  expanding  till  it  transcended  all  bounds, 
till  it  filled  and  overflowed  the  whole  field  of  your 
thought !  Or  what  if  this  man  Odin,  —  since  a  great 
deep   soul,  with   the   afflatus  and  mysterious   tide  of 

^  Scotch  economist  and  philosopher  (1723-1790),  best  known 
by  his  Wealth  of  Nations  (177C). 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  35 

vision  and  impulse  rushing  on  him  he  knows  not 
whence,  is  ever  an  enigma,  a  kind  of  terror  and 
wonder  to  himself,  —  should  have  felt  that  perhaps  he 
was  divine ;  that  he  was  some  effluence  of  the  '  Wuo- 
tan,'  '  Movement,''  Supreme  Power  and  Divinity,  of 
whom  to  his  rapt  vision  all  Natvire  was  the  awful 
Flame-image ;  that  some  effluence  of  Wnotan  dwelt 
here  in  him !  He  was  not  necessarily  false ;  he  was 
but  mistaken,  speaking  the  truest  he  knew.  A  great 
sold,  any  sincere  soul,  knows  not  ichat  he  is,  —  alter- 
nates between  the  highest  height  and  the  lowest 
depth ;  can,  of  all  things,  the  least  measure  —  Him- 
self !  What  others  take  him  for,  and  what  he  guesses 
that  he  may  be ;  these  two  items  strangely  act  on  one 
another,  help  to  determine  one  another.  With  all 
men  reverently  admiring  him  ;  with  his  own  wild  soul 
fuU  of  noble  ardours  and  affections,  of  whirlwind 
chaotic  darkness  and  glorious  new  light ;  a  divine 
Universe  bursting  all  into  godlike  beauty  round  him, 
and  no  man  to  whom  the  like  ever  had  befallen,  what 
covdd  he  think  himself  to  be?  "Wuotan?"  All 
men  answered,  "  Wuotan  !  "  — 

And  then  consider  what  mere  Time  will  do  in  such 
cases ;  how  if  a  man  was  great  while  living,  he  be- 
comes tenfold  greater  when  dead.  What  an  enormous 
camera-ohscura  ^  magnifier  is  Tradition  !  How  a  thing 
grows  in  the  human  Memory,  in  the  human  Imagina- 

^  "  Dark  chamber,"  whether  a  room  or  a  box,  into  wliich  a  small 
opening,  usually  provided  with  a  lens,  admits  light,  wliich 
strikes  upon  a  screen  opposite,  forming  an  image  of  tlie  exter- 
nal objects  in  range  of  the  opening.  The  picture  formed  on  the 
ground  glass  of  an  ordinary  photographic  camera  is  a  camera- 
ohscura  image. 


£6  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

tion,  when  love,  worship,  and  all  that  lies  in  the 
human  Heart  is  there  to  encourage  it.  And  in  the 
darkness,  in  the  entire  ignorance ;  without  date  or 
document,  no  book,  no  Arundel-marble ;  ^  only  here 
and  there  some  dumb  monumental  cairn.  Why,  in 
thirty  or  forty  years,  were  there  no  books,  any  great 
man  would  grow  mythic^  the  contemporaries  who  had 
seen  him,  being  once  all  dead.  And  in  three-hundred 
years,  and  in  three-thousand  years  —  I  —  To  attempt 
thaorisincj  on  such  matters  would  profit  little:  they 
are  matters  which  refuse  to  be  tlieoremed  and  dia- 
gramed ;  which  Logic  ought  to  know  that  she  cannot 
speak  of.  Enough  for  us  to  discern,  far  in  the  utter- 
most distance,  some  gleam  as  of  a  small  real  light  shin- 
injr  in  the  centre  of  that  enormous  camera-obscura 
image ;  to  discern  that  the  centre  of  it  all  was  not  a 
madness  and  nothing,  but  a  sanity  and  something. 

This  light,  kindled  in  the  great  dark  vortex  of  the 
Norse  Mind,  dark  but  living,  waiting  only  for  light ; 
this  is  to  me  the  centre  of  the  whole.  How  such  light 
will  then  shine  out,  and  with  wondrous  thousandfold 
expansion  spread  itself,  in  forms  and  colours,  depends 
not  on  it^  so  much  as  on  the  National  Mind  recipient 
of  it.  The  colours  and  forms  of  j^our  light  will  be  those 
of  the  cut-glass  it  has  to  shine  through.  —  Curious  to 
think  how,  for  every  man,  any  the  truest  fact  is  mod- 
elled by  the  nature  of  the  man  !  I  said.  The  earnest 
man,  speaking  to  his  brother  men,  must  always  have 

1  The  Earl  of  Arundel  and  Surrey  (1586-1646)  made  the 
collection  of  marbles  called  by  his  name,  afterward  presented 
to  Oxford  University,  of  which  the  most  noted  is  the  Parian 
Chronicle,  a  chronology  of  the  chief  events  of  Greek  history 
from  1582  to  264  B.  c. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  37 

stated  what  seemed  to  him  a  fact^  a  real  Appearance 
of  Nature.  But  the  way  in  which  such  Appearance  or 
fact  shaped  itself,  —  what  sort  of  fact  it  became  for 
him,  —  was  and  is  modified  by  his  own  laws  of  think- 
ing ;  deep,  subtle,  but  universal,  ever-operating  laws. 
The  world  of  Nature,  for  every  man,  is  the  Fantasy  of 
Himself ;  this  world  is  the  multiplex  '  Image  of  his  own 
Dream.'  Who  knows  to  what  uunameable  subtleties 
of  spiritual  law  all  these  Pagan  Fables  owe  their 
shape  !  The  number  Twelve,  divisiblest  of  all,  which 
could  be  halved,  quartered,  parted  into  three,  into  six, 
the  most  remarkable  number,  —  this  was  enough  to 
determine  the  Signs  of  the  Zodiac,  the  nmnber  of 
Odin's  Sons,  and  innumerable  other  Twelves.  Any 
vague  rumour  of  number  had  a  tendency  to  settle  itseK 
into  Twelve.  So  with  regard  to  every  other  matter. 
And  quite  unconsciously  too,  —  with  no  notion  of 
building-up  '  Allegories  ' !  But  the  fresh  clear  glance 
of  those  First  Ages  would  be  prompt  in  discerning  the 
secret  relations  of  things,  and  wholly  open  to  obey 
these.  SchiUer  1  finds  in  the  Cestus'^  of  Venus  an  ever- 
lasting aesthetic  truth  as  to  the  nature  of  all  Beauty  ; 
curious:  — but  he  is  carefid  n<^  to  insinuate  that  the 
old  Greek  Mytliists  had  any  notion  of  lecturing  about 

the  '  Philosophy  of  Criticism '  ! On   the   whole, 

we  must  leave  those  boimdless  regions.  Cannot  we 
conceive  that  Odin  was  a  reality  ?  Error  indeed, 
error  enough  :  but  sheer  falsehood,  idle  fables,  allegory 
afoi-ethought,  —  we  will  not  believe  that  our  Fathers 
believed  in  these. 

^  German  poet  and  dramatist  (1759-1805);  friend  of  Goethe. 
^  Girdle,  embroidered  with  various  enticements  to  love. 


38  LECTURES    ON   HEROES 

Odin's  Runes  are  a  significant  feature  of  him. 
Runes,  and  the  miracles  of  '  magic  '  he  worked  by 
them,  make  a  great  feature  in  tradition.  Kunes  are 
the  Scandinavian  Alphabet ;  suppose  Odin  to  have 
been  the  inventor  of  Letters,  as  well  as  '  magic,'  among 
that  people  !  It  is  the  greatest  invention  man  has  ever 
made,  this  of  marking-down  the  unseen  thought  that 
is  in  him  by  written  characters.  It  is  a  kind  of  second 
speech,  almost  as  miraculous  as  the  first.  You  remem- 
ber the  astonishment  and  incredulity  of  Atahualjia^ 
the  Peruvian  King  ;  how  he  made  the  Spanish  Soldier 
who  was  guarding  him  scratch  Dios  on  his  thumb-nail, 
that  he  might  try  the  next  soldier  with  it,  to  ascertain 
whether  such  a  miracle  was  possible.  If  Odin  brought 
Letters  among  his  people,  he  might  work  magic  enough ! 

Writing  by  liunes  has  some  air  of  being  original 
among  the  Norsemen :  not  a  Phoenician  ^  Alphabet, 
but  a  native  Scandinavian  one.  Suorro  tells  us  farther 
that  Odin  invented  Poetry ;  the  music  of  human 
speech,  as  well  as  that  miraculous  runic  marking  of  it. 
Transport  yourselves  into  the  early  childhood  of  na- 
tions ;  the  first  beautiful  morning-light  of  our  Eui'ope, 
when  all  yet  lay  in  fresh  young  radiance  as  of  a  great 

^  The  earliest  Germanic  letters.  O.  E.  ran  =  secret,  mystery. 
The  runic  alphabet  was  called  "  f  uthark,"  from  the  first  six  letters. 
J^  h  l>  f^  k  <  .  Tlie  Elder  Edda  tells  that  Odin  hung  nine  whole 
f  u  til  a  r  k  nights  on  the  wind-rocked  tree  Igdrasil,  and 
sacrificed  himself  to  himself.  While  hanging  there  he  discovered 
the  runes. 

^  Treacherously  executed  by  Pizarro,  1533. 

•^  The  alphabet  of  the  Phcenicians,  ancient  inhabitants  of  the 
eastern  coast  of  the  Mediterranean,  dates  from  as  far  back  as 
1000  B.  0.  It  is  the  ancestor  of  the  Greek,  Roman,  and  moderu 
European  alphabets. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  39 

sunrise,  and.  our  Europe  was  first  beginning  to  think, 
to  be  !  Wonder,  hope  ;  infinite  radiance  of  hope  and 
wonder,  as  of  a  young"  child's  thoughts,  in  the  hearts 
of  these  strong  men  !  Strong  sons  of  Nature  ;  and  here 
was  not  only  a  wild  Captain  and  Fighter  ;  discerning 
with  his  wild  flashing  eyes  what  to  do,  with  his  wild 
lion-heart  daring  and  doing  it ;  but  a  Poet  too,  all  that 
we  mean  by  a  Poet,  Prophet,  great  devout  Thinker 
and  Inventor,  —  as  the  truly  Great  Man  ever  is.  A 
Hero  is  a  Hero  at  all  points ;  in  the  soul  and  thought 
of  him  first  of  all.  This  Odin,  in  his  rude  semi-articu- 
late way,  had  a  word  to  speak.  A  great  heart  laid 
open  to  take  in  this  great  Universe,  and  man's  Life 
here,  and  utter  a  great  word  about  it.  A  Hero,  as  I 
say,  in  his  own  rude  manner  ;  a  wise,  gifted,  noble- 
hearted  man.  And  now,  if  we  still  admire  such  a  man 
beyond  all  others,  what  must  these  wild  Norse 
souls,  first  awakened  into  thinking,  have  made  of 
him!  To  them,  as  yet  without  names  for  it,  he  was 
noble  and  noblest ;  Hero,  Prophet,  God  ;  Wuotan^  the 
greatest  of  all.  Thought  is  Thought,  however  it  speak 
or  spell  itself.  Intrinsically,  I  conjecture,  this  Odin 
must  have  been  of  the  same  sort  of  stuff  as  the  great- 
est kind  of  men.  A  great  thought  in  the  wild  deep 
heart  of  him  I  The  rough  words  he  articulated,  are 
they  not  the  rudimental  roots  of  those  English  words 
we  still  use?  He  worked  so,  in  that  obscure  element. 
But  he  was  as  a  light  kindled  in  it ;  a  light  of  Intel- 
lect, rude  Nobleness  of  heart,  the  only  kind  of  lights 
we  have  yet ;  a  Hero,  as  I  say :  and  he  had  to  shine 
there,  and  make  his  obscure  element  a  little  lighter, 
■ —  as  is  still  the  task  of  us  all. 


40  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

We  will  fancy  liim  to  be  the  Tj-jie  Norseman  ;  the 
finest  Teuton  whom  that  race  had  yet  produced.  The 
rude  Norse  heart  burst-up  into  boundless  admiration 
round  him  ;  into  adoration.  He  is  as  a  root  of  so 
many  great  things  ;  the  fruit  of  him  is  found  grow- 
ing, from  deep  thousands  of  years,  over  the  whole  field 
of  Teutonic  Life.  Our  own  Wednesday,  as  I  said,  is 
it  not  still  Odin's  Day  ?  Wednesbury,  Wansborough, 
Wanstead,  Wandsworth :  Odin  grew  into  England 
too,  these  are  still  leaves  from  that  root !  He  was  the 
Chief  God  to  all  the  Teutonic  People  ;  their  Pattei-n 
Norseman  ;  —  in  such  way  did  thcu  admire  their  Pat- 
tern Norseman  ;  that  was  the  fortune  he  had  in  the 
world. 

Thus  if  the  man  Odin  himself  have  vanished  utterly, 
there  is  this  huge  Shadow  of  him  which  still  projects 
itself  over  the  whole  History  of  his  People.  For  this 
Odin  once  admitted  to  be  God,  we  can  understand 
well  that  the  whole  Scandinavian  Scheme  of  Nature 
or  dim  No-scheme,  whatever  it  might  before  have  been, 
would  now  begin  to  develop  itself  altogetlier  differ- 
ently, and  gi'ow  thenceforth  in  a  new  manner.  What 
this  Odin  saw  into,  and  taught  with  his  runes  and  his 
rhymes,  the  whole  Teutonic  People  laid  to  heart  and 
carried  forward.  His  way  of  thought  became  their 
way  of  thought :  —  such,  under  new  conditions,  is  the 
history  of  every  great  thinker  still.  In  gigantic  con- 
fused lineaments,  like  some  enormous  camera-obscura 
shadow  thrown  upward  from  the  dead  deeps  of  the 
Past,  and  covering  the  whole  Northern  Heaven,  is 
not  that  Scandinavian  Mythology  in  some  sort  the 
Portraiture  of  this  man  Odin  ?  The  gigantic  image  of 


;  THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  41 

[is  natural  face,  legible  or  not  legible  there,  expanded 
l.nd  confused  in  that  manner  !  Ah,  Thought,  I  say,  is 
ilways  Thought.  No  great  man  lives  in  vain.  The 
History  of  the  world  is  but  the  Biography  of  great 
Itien. 

To  me  there  is  something  very  touching  in  this 
n-imeval  figure  of  Heroism  ;  in  such  artless,  helpless, 
tut  hearty  entire  reception  of  a  Hero  by  his  fellow-men. 
■fever  so  helpless  in  shape,  it  is  the  noblest  of  feelings, 
:.nd  a  feeling  in  some  shape  or  other  perennial  as  man 
iimself.  If  I  could  show  in  any  measure,  what  I  feel 
ieeply  for  a  long  time  now.  That  it  is  the  vital  ele- 
nent  of  manhood,  the  soul  of  man's  history  here  in 
i»ur  world,  —  it  would  be  the  chief  use  of  this  discours- 
"iig  at  present.  We  do  not  now  call  our  great  men 
ijods,  nor  admire  without  limit  :  ah  no,  loith  limit 
enough  !  But  if  we  have  no  great  men,  or  do  not 
tdmire  at  all,  —  that  were  a  still  worse  case. 

This  poor  Scandinavian  Hero-worship,  that  whole 
*forse  way  of  looking  at  the  Universe,  and  adjusting 
imeself  there,  has  an  indestructi'ole  merit  for  us.  A 
ude  childlike  way  of  recognising  the  divineuess  of  Na- 
me, the  divineuess  of  jMan  :  must  rude,  yet  heartfelt, 
obust,  giantlike  ;  betokening  what  a  giant  of  a  man 
his  child  would  yet  grow  to!  —  It  was  a  truth,  and 
'S  none.  Is  it  not  as  the  half-dumb  stifled  voice  of  the 
ong-buried  generations  of  our  own  Fathers,  calling  out 
)f  the  depths  of  ages  to  us,  in  whose  veins  their  blood 
;till  runs  :  "  This  then,  this  is  what  v:e  made  of  the 
vorld  :  this  is  all  the  image  and  notion  we  could  form 
}o  ourselves  of  this  great  mystery  of  a  Life  and  Uni- 
verse.   Despise  it  not.    You  are  raised  liigh  above  it. 


42  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

to  large  free  scope  of  \dsion :  but  you  too  are  not  yet 
at  the  top.  No,  your  notion  too,  so  uiucli  enlarged,  is 
but  a  partial,  imperfect  one  ;  that  matttir  is  a  thing  no 
man  will  ever,  in  time  or  out  of  timi;,  comprehend  ; 
after  thousands  of  years  of  ever-new  expansion,  man 
will  find  himself  but  struggling  to  comprehend  again 
a  part  of  it:  the  thing  is  larger  than  man,  not  to  be 
comprehended  by  him  ;  an  Infinite  thing  !  " 

The  essence  of  the  Scandinavian,  as  indeed  of  all 
Pagan  Mythologies,  we  found  to  be  recognition  of  the 
divineness  of  Nature  ;  sincere  communion  of  man  witlf 
the  mysterious  invisible  Powers  visibly  seen  at  work  in 
the  world  round  him.  This,  I  should  say,  is  more  sin- 
cerely done  in  the  Scandinavian  than  in  any  Mythol- 
ogy I  know.  Sincerity  is  the  great  characteristic  of  it. 
Superior  sincerity  (far  superior)  consoles  us  for  the  total 
want  of  old  Grecian  grace.  Sincerity,  1  think,  is  bet- 
ter than  grace.  I  feel'  that  these  old  Northmen  were 
looking  into  Nature  with  open  eye  and  soul :  most 
earnest,  honest ;  childlike,  and  yet  manlike ;  with  a 
great-hearted  simplicity  and  depth  and  freshness,  in  a 
true,  loving,  admiring,  unfearing  way.  A  right  valiant, 
true  old  race  of  men.  Such  recognition  of  Nature  owe 
finds  to  be  the  chief  element  of  Paganism  :  recognition 
of  Man,  and  his  Moral  Duty,  though  this  too  is  not 
wanting,  comes  to  be  the  chief  element  only  in  purer 
forms  of  religion.  Here,  indeed,  is  a  great  distinction 
and  epoch  in  Human  Beliefs ;  a  great  landmark  in 
the  religious  development  of  Mankind.  Man  first  jiuts 
himself  in  relation  with  Nature  and  her  Powers,  wonders 
and  worships  over  those ;  not  till  a  later  epoch  does  he 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  43 

discern  tliat  all  Power  is  Moral,  that  the  grand  point 
is  the  distinction  for  him  of  Good  and  Evil,  of  Thou 
shalt  and  TJiou  shall  not. 

With  rejrard  to  all  these  fabulous  delineations  in 
the  Edda^i  I  will  remark,  moreover,  as  indeed  was 
already  hinted,  that  most  probably  they  must  have 
been  of  much  newer  date ;  most  probably,  even  from 
the  first,  were  comparatively  idle  for  the  old  Norse- 
men, and  as  it  were  a  kind  of  Poetic  sport.  Allegory 
and  Poetic  Delineation,  as  I  said  above,  cannot  be  re- 
ligious Faith ;  the  Faith  itself  must  first  be  there,  then 
Allegory  enough  will  gather  round  it,  as  the  fit  body 
round  its  soul.  The  Norse  Faith,  I  can  well  suppose, 
like  other  Faiths,  was  most  active  while  it  lay  mainly 
in  the  silent  state,  and  had  not  yet  much  to  say  about 
itseK,  still  less  to  sing. 

Among  those  shadowy  Edda  matters,  amid  all  that 
fantastic  congeries  of  assertions,  and  traditions,  in  their 
musical  Mythologies,  the  main  practical  belief  a  man 
could  have  was  probably  not  much  more  than  this :  of 
the  Valkyrs  ^  and  the  Hall  of  Odin ;  of  an  inflexible 
Destiny ;  and  that  the  one  thing  needful  for  a  man 
was  to  he  brave.  The  Valkyrs  are  Choosers  of  the 
Slain ;  a  Destiny  inexorable,  which  it  is  useless  trying 
to  bend  or  soften,  has  appointed  who  Is  to  be  slain  ; 
this  was  a  fundamental  point  for  the  Norse  believer ; 
—  as  indeed  it  Is  for  all  earnest  men  everywhere,  for 
a  Mahomet,  a  Luther,  for  a  Napoleon  too.    It  lies  at 

^  These  wildly  beautiful  maidens  weave  the  web  of  battle. 
They  ride  through  the  air,  clad  in  brilliant  armor.  As  the  name 
("Choosers  of  the  Slain")  implies,  they  carry  the  brave  war- 
riors, slain  in  battle,  to  their  reward  in  Valhalla,  the  Hall  of  the 
Slain.    See  add.  note  to  p.  47,  n.  1. 


44  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

the  basis  this  for  every  such  man  ;  it  is  the  woof  out 
of  which  his  whole  system  of  thought  is  woven.  The 
Valkyrs  ;  and  then  that  these  Choosers  lead  the  brave 
to  a  heavenly  Hall  of  Odin  ;  only  the  base  and  slavish 
being  thrust  elsewhither,  into  the  reahns  of  Ilela  the 
Death-goddess  :  I  take  this  to  have  been  the  soul  of  the 
whole  Norse  Belief.  They  understood  in  their  heart 
that  it  was  indispensable  to  be  brave  ;  that  Odin  would 
have  no  favor  for  them,  but  despise  and  thrust  them  out, 
if  they  were  not  brave.  Consider  too  whether  there  is 
not  something  in  this !  It  is  an  everlasting  duty,  valid 
in  our  day  as  in  that,  the  duty  of  being  brave.  Valor 
is  still  value.  The  first  duty  for  a  man  is  still  that  of 
subduing  Fear.  We  must  get  rid  of  Fear  ;  we  cannot 
act  at  all  till  then.  A  man's  acts  are  slavish,  not  true 
but  specious ;  his  very  thoughts  are  false,  he  thinks 
too  as  a  slave  and  coward,  till  he  have  got  Fear  under 
his  feet.  Odin's  creed,  if  we  disentangle  the  real  ker- 
nel of  it,  is  true  to  this  hour.  A  man  shall  and  must 
be  valiant ;  he  must  march  forward,  and  quit  himself 
like  a  man,  —  trusting  imperturbably  in  the  appoint- 
ment and  choice  of  the  upper  Powers ;  and,  on  the 
whole,  not  fear  at  all.  Now  and  always,  the  complete- 
ness of  his  victory  over  Fear  will  determine  how  much 
of  a  man  he  is. 

It  is  doubtless  very  savage  that  kind  of  valour  of 
the  old  Northmen.  Snorro  tells  us  they  thought  it  a 
shame  and  misery  not  to  die  in  battle ;  and  if  natural 
death  seemed  to  be  coming  on,  they  would  cut  wounds 
in  their  flesh,  that  Odin  might  receive  them  as  warriors 
slain.  Old  kings,  about  to  die,  had  their  body  laid 
into  a  ship  ;  the  ship  sent  forth,   with  sails  set  and 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  45 

slow  fire  burning  it ;  that,  once  out  at  sea,  it  might 
blaze-up  in  flame,  and  in  such  manner  bury  worthily 
the  old  hero,  at  once  in  the  sky  and  in  the  ocean  ! 
Wild  bloody  valour  ;  yet  valour  of  its  kind ;  better,  I 
say,  than  none.  In  the  old  Sea-kings,  too,  what  an 
indomitable  rugged  energy !  Silent,  with  closed  lips, 
as  I  fancy  them,  unconscious  that  they  were  specially 
brave ;  defying  the  wild  ocean  with  its  monsters,  and 
all  men  and  things  ;  —  progenitors  of  our  own  Blakes 
and  Nelsons !  No  Homer  sang  these  Norse  Sea-kings  ; 
but  Agamemnon's  was  a  small  audacity,  and  of  small 
fruit  in  the  world,  to  some  of  them  ;  —  to  Hrolf 's  of 
Normandy,  for  instance  !  Hrolf,  or  Kollo  ^  Duke  of 
Normandy,  the  wild  Sea-king,  has  a  share  in  govern- 
ing England  at  this  hour. 

Nor  was  it  altogether  nothing,  even  that  wild  sea- 
roving  and  battling,  through  so  many  generations.  It 
needed  to  be  ascertained  which  was  the  strongest  kind 
of  men ;  who  were  to  be  ruler  over  whom.  Among  the 
Northland  Sovereigns,  too,  I  find  some  who  got  the 
title  Wood-cutter  ;  Forest-felling  Kings.  Much  lies  in 
that.  I  suppose  at  bottom  many  of  them  were  forest- 
fellers  as  well  as  fighters,  though  the  Skalds  talk 
mainly  of  the  latter,  —  misleading  certain  critics  not 
a  little  ;  for  no  nation  of  men  could  ever  live  by  fight- 
ing alone ;  there  could  not  produce  enough  come  out 
of  that !  I  suppose  the  right  good  fighter  was  oftenest 
also  the  right  good  forest-feller,  —  the  right  good 
improver,  discerner,  doer  and  worker  in  every  kind ; 
for  true  valour,  different  enough  from  ferocity,  is  thei 
basis  of  all.  A  more  legitimate  kind  of  valour  that ; 
1  First  Duke  of  Nonnandy  (?860-?930). 


46  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

showing  itself  against  the  untamed  Forests  and  dark 
brute  Powers  of  Nature,  to  conquer  Nature  for  us. 
In  the  same  direction  have  not  we  their  descendants 
since  carried  it  far  ?  May  such  valour  last  for  ever 
with  us ! 

That  the  man  Odin,  speaking  with  a  Hero's  voice 
and  heart,  as  with  an  impressiveuess  out  of  Heaven, 
told  his  People  the  infinite  importance  of  Valour,  how 
man  thereby  became  a  god  ;  and  that  his  People,  feel- 
ing a  response  to  it  in  their  own  hearts,  believed  this 
message  of  his,  and  thought  it  a  message  out  of  Hea- 
ven, and  him  a  Divinity  for  telling  it  them  :  this  seems 
to  me  the  primary  seed-grain  of  the  Norse  Religion, 
from  which  all  manner  qi  mythologies,  symbolic  prac- 
tices, speculations,  allegories,  songs  and  sagas  would 
naturally  grow.  Grow,  —  how  strangely !  I  called  it 
a  small  light  shining  and  shaping  in  the  huge  vortex 
of  Norse  darkness.  Yet  the  darkness  itself  was  alive  ; 
consider  that.  It  was  the  eager  inarticulate  uninstructed 
Mind  of  the  whole  Norse  People,  longing  only  to  be- 
come articulate,  to  go  on  articulating  ever  farther !  The 
living  doctrine  grows,  grows  ;  —  like  a  Banyan-tree  ; 
the  first  seed  is  the  essential  thing :  any  branch  strikes 
itself  down  into  the  earth,  becomes  a  new  root ;  and  so, 
in  endless  complexity,  we  have  a  whole  wood,  a  whole 
jungle,  one  seed  the  parent  of  it  all.  Was  not  the 
whole  Norse  Religion,  accordingly,  in  some  sense,  what 
we  called  '  the  enormous  shadow  of  this  man's  like- 
ness '  ?  Critics  trace  some  affinity  in  some  Norse  my- 
♦  thuses,  of  the  Creation  and  suchlike,  with  those  of  the 
Hindoos.  The  Cow  Adumbla,^  '  licking  the  rime  from 
^  Interpreted  as  representing  Chaos. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  47 

the  rocks,'  has  a  kind  of  Hiiuloo  look.  A  Hindoo  Cow, 
transported  into  frosty  countries.  Probably  enough  ; 
indeed  we  may  say  undoubtedly,  these  things  will  have 
a  kindred  with  the  remotest  lands,  with  the  earliest 
times.  Thought  does  not  die,  but  only  is  changed.  The 
first  man  that  began  to  think  in  this  Planet  of  ours,  he 
was  the  beginner  of  all.  And  then  the  second  man, 
and  the  third  man  ;  — nay,  every  true  Thinker  to 
this  hour  is  a  kind  of  Odin,  teaches  men  his  way  of 
thought,  spreads  a  shadow  of  his  own  likeness  over 
sections  of  the  History  of  the  World. 

Of  the  distinctive  poetic  character  or  merit  of  this 
Norse  Mythology  I  have  not  room  to  speak  ;  nor  does 
it  concern  us  much.  Some  wild  Prophecies  we  have, 
as  the  Voluspa  in  the  Elder  Edda ;  of  a  rapt,  ear- 
nest, sibylline  sort.  But  they  were  comparatively  an 
idle  adjunct  of  the  matter,  men  who  as  it  were  but 
toyed  with  the  matter,  these  later  Skalds  ;  and  it  is 
their  songs  chiefly  that  survive.  In  later  centuries,  I 
suppose,  they  would  go  on  singing,  poetically  symbol- 
ising, as  our  modern  Painters  paint,  when  it  was  no 
longer  from  the  Innermost  heart,  or  not  from  the  heart 
at  all.    This  is  everywhere  to  be  well  kept  in  mind. 

Gray's  fragments  of  Norse  Lore,^  at  any  rate,  will 
give  one  no  notion  of  it ;  —  any  more  than  Pope  will 
of  Homer.  It  •  is  no  square-built  gloomy  palace  of 
black  ashlar  marble,  shrouded  in  awe  and  horror,  as 
Gray  gives  it  us :  no  ;  rough  as  the  North  rocks,  as 

^  The  Fatal  Sisterx  and  The  Descent  of  O'/in,  free  rendering's  of 
Norse  Odes,  by  Thomas  Gray  (1716-1771),  the  author  of  the 
Elegy  Written  in  a  Country  Churchyard.   See  add.  note. 


48  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

the  Iceland  deserts,  it  in ;  with  a  heartiness,  homeli- 
ness, even  a  tint  of  good  humour  and  robust  mirth  in 
the  middle  of  these  fearfid  things.  The  strong  old 
Norse  heart  did  not  go  upon  theatrical  sublimities  ; 
they  had  not  time  to  tremble.  I  like  much  their  ro- 
bust simplicity ;  their  veracity,  directness  of  concc})- 
tion.  Thor  '  draws  down  his  brows '  in  a  veritable 
Norse  rage  ;  '  grasps  his  hammer  till  tlie  knuckles 
grow  white.''  Beautiful  traits  of  pity  too,  an  honest 
pity.  Balder  ^  '  the  white  God '  dies  ;  the  beautiful, 
benignant ;  he  is  the  Sungod.  They  try  all  Nature 
for  a  remedy  ;  but  he  is  dead.  Frigga,  his  mother, 
sends  Hermoder^  to  seek  or  see  him  :  nine  days  and 
nine  nights  he  rides  through  gloomy  deep  valleys,  a 
labyrinth  of  gloom ;  arrives  at  the  Bridge  with  its 
gold  roof :  the  Keeper  says,  "  Yes,  Balder  did  pass 
here ;  but  the  Kingdom  of  the  Dead  is  down  yonder, 
far  towards  the  North."  Hermoder  rides  on ;  leaps 
Hell-gate,  Hela's  gate  ;  does  see  Balder,  and  speak 
with  him ;  Ba.lder  cannot  be  delivered.  Inexorable ! 
Hela  will  not,  for  Odin  or  any  God,  give  him  up.  The 
beautiful  and  gentle  has  to  remain  there.  His  Wife 
had  volunteered  to  go  with  him,  to  die  with  him.  They 
shall    for  ever  remain    there.     He  sends  his  ring  to 

^  The  second  son  of  Odin  and  Frigga.  His  motlier  obtained 
an  oath  from  all  things  except  the  n)istletoe,  which  was  over- 
looked as  harmless,  not  to  hurt  Balder.  Loke  persuaded  Balder's 
blind  brother  to  cast  a  sprig  of  mistletoe  at  Balder,  whieli  killed 
him.  Hela  promised  to  let  Balder  return  if  all  the  world  of  be- 
ings and  things  would  mourn  for  him.  But  one  giant-hag,  after- 
wards discovered  to  be  Loke  in  disguise,  refused.  See  Matthew 
Arnold's  Balder  Dead. 

"  The  swift  messenger,  servant  of  Odin. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  49 

Odin  ;  Nanua  bis  wife  sends  lier  thimble  to  Frig-ga,  as 
a  remembrance.  —  Ab  me  !  — 

For  indeed  Valour  is  tbe  fountain  of  Pity  too ;  —  of 
Trutb,  and  all  tbat  is  great  and  good  in  man.  Tbe 
robust  bomely  vigour  of  tbe  Norse  beart  attacbes  one 
mucb,  in  tbese  delineations.  Is  it  not  a  trait  of  ri<rbt 
honest  strength,  says  Uhland,^  who  has  written  a  fine 
Essay  on  Thor,  tbat  tbe  old  Norse  beart  finds  its 
friend  in  the  Thunder-god  ?  Tbat  it  is  not  frightened 
away  by  bis  thunder ;  but  finds  that  Summer-heat,  the 
beautiful  noble  summer,  must  and  will  have  thunder 
withal !  The  Norse  beart  loves  this  Thor  and  bis  ham- 
mer-bolt ;  sports  with  him.  Thor  is  Smnmer-heat ;  tbe 
god  of  Peaceable  Industry  as  well  as  Thunder.  He  is 
tbe  Peasant's  friend ;  his  true  henchman  and  attendant 
is  Thialfi,  Manual  Labour.  Thor  bimseK  engages  in 
all  manner  of  rough  manual  work,  scorns  no  business 
for  its  plebeianism ;  is  ever  and  anon  travellmg-  to  tbe 
country  of  tbe  Jotuns,  harrying  those  chaotic  Frost- 
monsters,  subduing  them,  at  least  straitening  and  dam- 
aging them.  There  is  a  great  broad  humour  in  some  of 
tbese  things. 

Thor,  as  we  saw  above,  goes  to  Jotun-land,  to  seek 
Hymir's  Caldron,  that  the  Gods  may  brew  beer. 
Hymir  tbe  huge  Giant  enters,  bis  grey  beard  all  full 
of  boar-frost ;  splits  pillars  with  the  very  glance  of  bis 
eye ;  Thor,  after  mucb  rough  tumult,  snatches  tbe  Pot, 
claps  it  on  his  bead ;  the  '  handles  of  it  reach  down  to 
bis  heels.'  The  Norse  Skald  has  a  kind  of  loving  sport 
with  Thor.    This  is  the  Hymir  whose  cattle,  the  critics 

^  Lyric  poet,  essayist,  and  scholar  (1787-1862)  ;  Essay  Ueber 
den  Mythus  von  Thor,  183G. 


50  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

have  discovered,  are  Icebergs.  Huge  untutored  Brob- 
dingnag  genius,  —  needing  only  to  be  tamed-down ;  into 
Shakspeares,  Dantes,  Goetlies  !  It  is  all  gone  now,  that 
old  Norse  work,  —  Thor  the  Thunder-god  changed 
into  Jack  the  Giant-killer:  but  the  mind  that  made  it 
is  here  yet.  How  strangely  things  grow,  and  die,  and 
do  not  die !  There  are  twigs  of  that  great  world-tree  of 
Norse  Belief  still  cm-iously  traceable.  This  poor  Jack 
of  the  Nursery,  with  his  miraculous  shoes  of  swiftness, 
coat  of  darkness,  sword  of  sharpness,  he  is  one.  Hyndc. 
Etin^  and  still  more  decisively  Red  Etin  of  Ireland, 
in  the  Scottish  Ballads,  these  are  both  derived  from 
Norseland ;  Etin  ^  is  evidently  a  Jbtun.  Nay,  Shaks- 
peare's  Hamlet  is  a  twig  too  of  this  same  world-tree  ; 
there  seems  no  doubt  of  that.  Hamlet,  Amleth,  I  find, 
is  really  a  mythic  personage  ;  and  his  Tragedy,  of  the 
poisoned  Father,  poisoned  asleep  by  drops  in  his  ear, 
and  the  rest,  is  a  Norse  mythus  !  Old  Saxo,  as  his 
wont  was,  made  it  a  Danish  history  ;  Shakspeare,  out 
of  Saxo,  made  it  what  we  see.  That  is  a  twig  of  the 
world-tree  that  has  grown,  I  think  ;  —  by  nature  or 
accident  that  one  has  grown  ! 

In  fact,  these  old  Norse  songs  have  a  truth  in  them, 
an  inward  perennial  truth  and  greatness,  —  as,  indeed, 
all  must  have  that  can  very  long  preserve  itself  by 
tradition  alone.  It  is  a  greatness  not  of  mere  body 
and  gigantic  bulk,  but  a  rude  greatness  of  soul.  There 
is  a  sublime  uncomplaining  melancholy  traceable  in 
these  old  hearts.  A  great  free  glance  into  the  very 
deeps  of  thought.    They  seem  to  have  seen,  these  brave 

1  Or  elen  =  giant,  dropped  out  of  use  in  English  speech  in  the 
seventeenth  century.   See  New  Eng.  Diet. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  51 

old  Northmen,  what  Meditation  has  taught  all  men  in  all 
ages,  That  this  world  is  after  all  but  a  show,  —  a 
phenomenon  or  appearance,  no  real  thing.  All  deep 
souls  see  into  that,  —  the  Hindoo  Mythologist,  the 
German  Philosopher,  —  the  Shakspeare,  the  earnest 
Thinker,  wherever  he  may  be :  — 

'  We  are  such  stuff  as  Dreams  are  made  of  ! '  ^ 

One  of  Thor's  expeditions,  to  Utgard  (the  Outer 
Garden,  central  seat  of  Jotun-land),  is  remarkable  in 
this  respect.  Thialfi  was  with  him,  and  Loke.  After 
various  adventures,  they  entered  upon  Giant-land; 
wandered  over  plains,  wild  uncultivated  places,  among 
stones  and  trees.  At  nightfall  they  noticed  a  house  ; 
and  as  the  door,  which  indeed  formed  one  whole  side 
of  the  house,  was  open,  they  entered.  It  was  a  simple 
habitation ;  one  large  hall,  altogether  empty.  They 
stayed  there.  Suddenly  in  the  dead  of  the  night  loud 
noises  alarmed  them.  Thor  grasped  his  hammer ;  stood 
in  the  door,  prepared  for  fight.  His  companions  within 
ran  hither  and  thither  in  their  terror,  seeking  some 
outlet  in  that  rude  hall ;  they  found  a  little  closet  at 
last,  and  took  refuge  there.  Neither  had  Thor  any 
battle :  for,  lo,  in  the  morning  it  turned-out  that  the 
noise  had  been  only  the  snoring  of  a  certain  enormous 
but  peaceable  Giant,  the  Giant  Skrymir,  who  lay  peace- 
ably sleeping  near  by  ;  and  this  that  they  took  for  a  house 
was  merely  his  Glove^  thrown  aside  there ;  the  door 
was  the  Glove- wrist ;  the  little  closet  they  had  fled 
into  was  the  Thumb  !  Such  a  glove  ;  —  I  remark  too 
that  it  had  not  fingers  as  ours  have,  but  only  a  thumb, 
and  the  rest  undivided :  a  most  ancient,  rustic  glove ! 
^  Carlyle's  favorite  quotation.    See  p.  156. 


52  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

Skrymir  now  carried  their  portmanteau  all  day ; 
Tbor,  however,  had  liis  a^\ii  suspicions,  did  not  like  the 
ways  of  Skrymir  ;  determined  at  night  to  jjut  an  end 
to  him  as  he  slept.  Raising  his  hammer,  he  struck 
down  into  the  Giant's  face  a  right  thunderbolt  blow, 
of  force  to  rend  rocks.  The  Giant  merely  awoke  ; 
rubbed  his  cheek,  and  said.  Did  a  leaf  fall?  Again 
Thor  struck,  so  soon  as  Skrymir  again  slept ;  a  better 
blow  than  before  ;  but  the  Giant  only  murmured.  Was 
that  a  grain  of  sand?  Thor's  third  stroke  was.  with 
both  his  hands  (the  'knuckles  white,'  I  suppose),  and 
seemed  to  dint  deep  into  Skrymir's  visage ;  but  he 
merely  checked  his  snore,  and  remarked,  There  must 
be  sparrows  roosting  in  this  tree,  I  think  ;  what  is  that 
they  have  dropt  ?  —  At  tlie  gate  of  Utgard,  a  place  so 
high  that  you  had  to  '  strain  your  neck  bending  back 
to  see  the  top  of  it,'  Skrymir  went  his  ways.  Thor 
and  his  companions  were  admitted ;  invited  to  share 
in  the  games  going  on.  To  Thor,  for  his  part,  they 
handed  a  Drinking-horn  ;  it  was  a  common  feat,  they 
told  him,  to  drink  this  dry  at  one  draught.  Long  and 
fiercely,  three  times  over,  Thor  drank  ;  but  made  hardly 
any  impression.  He  was  a  weak  child,  they  told  him : 
could  he  lift  that  Cat  he  saw  there  ?  Small  as  the  feat 
seemed,  Thor  with  his  whole  godlike  strength  could 
not ;  he  bent-up  the  creature's  back,  could  not  raise 
its  feet  off  the  ground,  could  at  the  utmost  raise  one 
foot.  Why,  you  are  no  man,  said  the  Utgard  people ; 
there  is  an  Old  Woman  that  will  wrestle  you  !  Thor, 
heartily  ashamed,  seized  this  haggard  Old  Woman ; 
but  could  not  throw  her. 

And  now,  on  their  quitting  Utgard,  the  chief  Jotun, 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  53 

escorting  them  politely  a  little  way,  said  to  Thor  : 
-'  You  are  beaten  then  :  —  yet  be  not  so  much  ashamed  ; 
there  was  deception  of  appearance  in  it.  That  Horn 
you  tried  to  drink  was  the  Sea ;  you  did  make  it  ebb  ; 
but  who  can  drink  that,  the  bottondess  !  The  Cat  you 
woidd  have  lifted,  —  why,  that  is  the  Midgard-snake^ 
the  Great  World-serpent,  which,  tail  in  mouth,  girds 
and  keeps-up  the  whole  created  world ;  had  you  torn 
that  up,  the  world  must  have  rushed  to  ruin !  As  for 
the  Old  Woman,  she  was  Time^  Old  Age,  Duration  : 
with  her  what  can  wrestle  ?  No  man  nor  no  god  with 
her ;  gods  or  men,  she  prevails  over  all !  And  then 
those  three  strokes  you  struck, —  look  at  these  three 
valleys  ;  your  three  strokes  made  these !  "  Thor  looked 
at  his  attendant  Jotun :  it  was  Skrymir ;  —  it  was,  say 
Norse  critics,  the  old  chaotic  rocky  Earth  in  person, 
and  that  glove-Aoz^se  was  some  Eartli-cavern  !  But 
Skrymir  had  vanished  ;  Utgard  with  its  skyhigh  gates, 
when  Thor  grasped  his  hammer  to  smite  them,  had 
gone  to  air  ;  only  the  Giant's  voice  was  heard  mock- 
ing :  "  Better  come  no  more  to  Jotunheira  !  "  — 

This  is  of  the  allegoric  period,  as  we  see,  and  half 
play,  not  of  the  prophetic  and  entirely  devout :  but  as 
a  mythus  is  there  not  real  antique  Norse  gold  in  it  ? 
More  true  metal,  rough  from  the  Mimer-stithy,^  than 
in  many  a  famed  Greek  Mythus  ahaqyed  far  better !  A 
great  broad  Bx'obdingnag  grin  of  true  humour  is  in 
this  Ski-ymir  ;  mirth  resting  on  eai'nestness  and  sad- 
ness, as  the  rainbow  on  black  tempest :  only  a  right 
valiant  heart  is  capable  of  that.    It  is  the  grim  hiunour 

^  According  to  the  Prose  Edda,  one  of  the  offspring  of  Loke. 
^  Forged  by  old  Norse  wisdom.    See  p.  28,  n.  1. 


54  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

of  our  own  Ben  Jonson,^  rare  old  Ben ;  runs  in  tlie 
blood  of  us,  I  fancy ;  for  one  catches  tones  of  it, 
under  a  still  other  shape,  out  of  the  American  Back- 
woods. 

That  is  also  a  very  striking  conception  that  of  the 
Rar/naroJc^^  Consummation,  or  Twilight  of  the  Gods. 
It  is  in  the  Voluspa  Song ;  seemingly  a  very  old,  pro- 
phetic idea.  The  Gods  and  Jotuns,  the  divine  Powers 
and  the  chaotic  brute  ones,  after  long  contest  and 
partial  victory  by  the  former,  meet  at  last  in  univer- 
sal world-embracing  wrestle  and  duel ;  World-serpent 
against  Thor,  strength  against  strength ;  mutually 
extinctive  ;  and  ruin, '  twilight,'  sinking  into  darkness, 
swallows  the  created  Universe.  The  old  Universe  with 
its  Gods  is  sunk  ;  but  it  is  not  final  death  :  there  is  to 
be  a  new  Heaven  and  a  new  Earth  ;  a  higher  supreme 
God,3  and  Justice  to  reign  among  men.  Curious :  this 
law  of  mutation,  which  also  is  a  law  written  in  man's 
inmost  thought,  had  been  deciphered  by  these  old  ear- 
nest Thinkers  in  their  rude  style  ;  and  how,  though  all 
dies,  and  even  gods  die,  yet  all  death  is  but  a  phoenix  ^ 

^  The  most  famous  of  the  dramatists  contemporary  with 
Shakespeare  (1574—1637).  "  O  rare  Ben  Johnson  "  (s!c)  is  in- 
scribed on  his  tombstone  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

^  After  the  deatli  of  Balder  the  gods  are  on  the  losing  side. 
Loke  puts  off  all  pretence  of  virtue,  and  becomes  the  leader  of 
the  hosts  of  Hela  in  the  final  battle.  Thor  slays  the  World-ser- 
pent, but  is  suffocated  by  the  fumes  of  its  poison. 

2  The  gods  of  the  old  mythology  were  not  morally  without  spot; 
in  knowledge  they  were  surpassed  by  the  giants,  who  antedated 
them.  After  the  Ragnarok  the  gods  that  arose  were  to  be  sin- 
less. 

*  The  Phoenix  myth  appears  in  Eastern  mythology  in  various 
forms.  According  to  the  most  familiar  version,  alluded  to  here,  the 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  55 

fire-death,  and  new-birth  into  the  Greater  and  the 
Better !  It  is  the  fundamental  Law  o£  Being  for  a 
creature  made  of  Time,  living  in  this  Place  of  Hope. 
All  earnest  men  have  seen  into  it ;  may  still  see 
into  it. 

And  now,  connected  with  this,  let  us  glance  at  the 
last  mythus  of  the  appearance  of  Thor  ;  and  end  there. 
I  fancy  it  to  be  the  latest  in  date  of  all  these  fables  ; 
a  sorrowing  protest  against  the  advance  of  Christian- 
ity, —  set  forth  reproachfully  by  some  Conservative 
Pagan.  King  Olaf  ^  has  been  harshly  blamed  for  his 
over-zeal  in  introducing  Christianity  ;  surely  I  should 
have  blamed  him  far  more  for  an  under-zeal  in  that ! 
He  paid  dear  enough  for  it ;  he  died  by  the  revolt  of 
his  Pagan  people,  in  battle,  in  the  year  1033,  at  Stick- 
elstad,  near  that  Drontheim,  where  the  chief  Cathedral 
of  the  North  has  now  stood  for  many  centuries,  dedi- 
cated gratefully  to  his  memory  as  Saint  Olaf.  The 
mythus  about  Thor  is  to  this  effect.  King  Olaf,  the 
Christian  Reform  King,  is  sailing  with  fit  escort  along 
the  shore  of  Norway,  from  haven  to  haven ;  dispensing- 
justice,  or  doing  other  royal  work  :  on  leaving  a  certain 
haven,  it  is  found  that  a  stranger,  of  grave  eyes  and 
aspect,  red  beard,  of  stately  robust  figure,  has  stept  in. 

Phcenix,  upon  growing  five  or  six  centuries  old,  builds  itself 
a  funeral  pyre,  and  from  its  ashes  arises  a  new  Phcenix:  hence 
its  frequent  use  as  a  symbol  of  immortality.  Only  one  of  tlie 
kind  is  in  existence  at  a  time. 

1  King  Olaf,  the  Saint  (c.  995-1033  ;  King,  1015-1028),  is  con- 
fused here  with  the  earlier  Olaf  Trygvason  (964-1000  ;  King 
from  995),  about  whom  the  story  is  told  in  the  original.  Both 
Olafs  employed  strenuous  methods  in  behalf  of  Christianity  in 
Norway. 


56  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

The  courtiers  address  him  ;  his  answers  surprise  by 
their  pertinency  and  depth  :  at  length  he  is  brought 
to  the  King.  The  stranger's  conversation  here  is  not 
less  remarkable,  as  thej'  sail  along  the  beautiful  shore  ; 
but  after  some  time,  he  addresses  King  Olaf  thus : 
"  Yes,  King  Olaf,  it  is  all  beautiful,  with  the  sun 
shining  on  it  there  ;  green,  fruitful,  a  right  fair  home 
for  you  ;  and  many  a  sore  day  liad  Thor,  many  a  wild 
fight  with  the  rock  Jiituns,  before  he  could  make  it  so. 
And  now  you  seem  minded  to  put  away  Thor.  King 
Olaf,  have  a  care  !  "  said  the  stranger,  drawing-down 
his  brows  ;  —  and  when  they  looked  again,  he  was 
nowhere  to  be  found.  —  This  is  the  last  appearance  of 
Thor  on  the  stage  of  this  world  ! 

Do  we  not  see  well  enoucrh  how  the  Fable  might 
arise,  without  unveracity  on  the  part  of  any  one  ?  It 
is  the  way  most  Gods  have  come  to  appear  among 
men :  thus,  if  in  Pindar's  ^  time  '  Neptune  ^  was  seen 
once  at  the  Nemean  Games,'  what  was  this  Neptune 
too  but  a  '  stranger  of  noble  grave  aspect,'  — Jit  to  be 
'  seen ' !  There  is  something  pathetic,  tragic  for  me 
in  this  last  voice  of  Paganism.  Thor  is  vanished,  the 
whole  Norse  world  has  vanished :  and  wiU  not  return 
ever  again.  In  like  fashion  to  that,  pass  away  the  high- 
est things.  All  things  that  have  been  in  this  world, 
all  things  that  are  or  will  be  in  it,  have  to  vanish :  we 
have  our  sad  farewell  to  give  them. 

^  Greek  poet  (b.  c.  522  to  soon  after  450). 

^  The  Latin  equivalent  for  the  Greek  sea  god  Poseidon,  who 
was  honored  especially  in  the  games  held  on  the  Corinthian 
Isthmus,  where  he  was  frequently  seen.  He  had  no  special  con- 
nection with  the  Nemean  Games,  another  of  the  great  nationa; 
festivals  of  Greece,  held  at  Argolis  in  the  Peloponnesus. 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY  bl 

That  Norse  Religion,  a  rude  but  earnest,  sternly 
impressive  Consecration  of  Valoiw  (so  we  may  define 
it),  sufficed  for  these  old  valiant  Northmen.  Conse- 
cration of  Valour  is  not  a  had  thing !  We  will  take 
it  for  good,  so  far  as  it  goes.  Neither  is  there  no  use 
in  knoioing  something  about  this  old  Paganism  of  our 
Fathers.  Unconsciously,  and  combined  with  higher 
things,  it  is  in  us  yet,  that  old  Faith  withal !  To  know 
it  consciously,  brings  us  into  closer  and  clearer  rela- 
tion with  the  Past,  —  with  our  own  possessions  in  the 
Past.  For  the  whole  Past,  as  I  keep  repeating,  is  the 
possession  of  the  Present ;  the  Past  had  always  some- 
thing true,  and  is  a  precious  possession.  In  a  diiferent 
time,  in  a  diiferent  place,  it  is  always  some  other  side 
of  our  common  Human  Nature  that  has  been  develop- 
ing itself.  The  actual  True  is  the  sum  of  all  these ; 
not  any  of  them  by  itself  constitutes  what  of  Human 
Nature  is  hitherto  developed.  Better  to  know  them 
all  than  misknow  them.  "  To  which  of  these  Three 
Religions  do  you  specially  adhere  ?  "  inquires  Meister 
of  his  Teacher.  "  To  all  the  Three !  "  answers  the 
other :  "  To  all  the  Three ;  for  they  by  their  union 
first  constitute  the  True  Religion."  ^ 

^  The  "  Three  "  who  preside  over  sacred  things  in  the  Utopian 
community  visited  by  Meister  have  just  previously  explained  to 
him  the  three  religions  regarded  among  them,  depending  upon 
reverence  for  (1)  what  is  above  us,  (2)  what  is  around  us,  (3) 
what  is  beneath  us,  —  which  tliey  call  the  Ethnic,  the  Philosophi- 
cal, and  the  Christian.  The  "  Three  "  give  the  answer  quoted. 
(Carlyle's  translation  of  Goethe's  Wilhelm  Meister,  Centenary 
Ed.,  II,  pp.  267,  268.) 


LECTURE   II 

THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.     MAHOMET  :  ISLAM 

[PMday,  8th  May  1840.] 

From  the  first  rude  times  of  Paganism  among  the 
Scandinavians  in  the  North,  we  advance  to  a  very  dif- 
ferent epoch  of  religion,  among  a  very  different  people : 
Mahometanism  among  the  Arabs.  A  great  change ; 
what  a  change  and  progress  is  indicated  here,  in  the 
universal  condition  and  thoughts  of  men  ! 

The  Hero  is  not  now  regarded  as  a  God  among  his 
fellow-men  ;  but  as  one  God-inspired,  as  a  Prophet.  It 
is  the  second  phasis  of  Hero-worship :  the  first  or  old- 
est, we  may  say,  has  passed  away  without  return  ;  in 
the  history  of  the  world  there  will  not  again  be  any 
man,  never  so  great,  whom  his  fellow-men  will  take  for 
a  god.  Nay  we  might  rationally  ask,  Did  any  set  of  hu- 
man beings  ever  really  think  the  man  they  saio  there 
standing  beside  them  a  god,  the  maker  of  this  world? 
Perhaps  not :  it  was  usually  some  man  they  remem- 
bered, or  had  seen.  But  neither  can  this  any  more  be. 
The  Great  Man  is  not  recognized  henceforth  as  a  god 
any  more. 

It  was  a  rude  gross  error,  that  of  counting  the 
Great  Man  a  god.  Yet  let  us  say  that  it  is  at  all  times 
difficult  to  know  what  he  is,  or  how  to  account  of  him 
and  receive  him !  The  most  significant  feature  in  the 
history  of  an  epoch  is  the  manner  it  has  of  welcoming 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  59 

a  Great  Man.  Ever,  to  the  true  instincts  of  men,  there 
is  something  godlike  in  him.  Whether  they  shall  take 
him  to  be  a  god,  to  be  a  prophet,  or  what  they  shall 
take  him  to  be  ?  that  is  ever  a  grand  question  ;  by 
their  way  of  answering  that,  we  shall  see,  as  through  a 
little  window,  into  the  very  heart  of  these  men's  spir- 
itual condition.  For  at  bottom  the  Great  Man,  as  he 
comes  from  the  hand  of  Nature,  is  ever  the  same  kind 
of  thing:  Odin,  Luther,  Johnson,  Burns;  I  hope  to 
make  it  appear  that  these  are  all  originally  of  one  stuff ; 
that  only  by  the  world's  reception  of  them,  and  the 
shapes  they  assume,  are  they  so  immeasurably  diverse. 
The  worship  of  Odin  astonishes  us,  —  to  fall  prostrate 
before  the  Great  Man,  into  deliquium  ^  of  love  and 
wonder  over  him,  and  feel  in  their  hearts  that  he  was  a 
denizen  of  the  skies,  a  god !  This  was  imperfect  enough : 
but  to  welcome,  for  example,  a  Burns  as  we  did,  was 
that  what  we  can  call  perfect  ?  The  most  precious  gift 
that  Heaven  can  give  to  the  Earth  ;  a  man  of  '  genius ' 
as  we  call  it ;  the  Soul  of  a  Man  actually  sent  down 
from  the  skies  with  a  God's-message  to  us,  —  this  we 
waste  away  as  an  idle  artificial  firework,  sent  to  amuse 
us  a  little,  and  sink  it  into  ashes,  wreck  and  ineffectu- 
ality :  such  reception  of  a  Great  Man  I  do  not  call  very 
perfect  either !  Looking  into  the  heart  of  the  thing, 
one  may  perhaps  call  that  of  Burns  a  still  uglier  phe- 
nomenon, betokening  still  sadder  imperfections  in  man- 
kind's ways,  than  the  Scandinavian  method  itself !  To 
fall  into  mere  unreasoning  deliquium  oi  love  and  admi- 
ration, was  not  good ;  but  such  unreasoning,  nay  irra- 
tional supercilious  no-love  at  all  is  perhaps  still  worse ! 
^  Melting,  swooning. 


60  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

—  It  is  a  thing  forever  changing,  this  of  Hero-worship : 
different  in  each  age,  difficult  to  do  well  in  any  age. 
Indeed  the  heart  of  the  whole  business  of  the  age,  one 
may  say,  is  to  do  it  well. 

We  have  chosen  Mahomet  not  as  the  niost  eminent 
Prophet ;  but  as  the  one  we  are  freest  to  speak  of.  He 
is  by  no  means  the  truest  of  Prophets  ;  but  I  do  esteem 
him  a  true  one.  Farther,  as  there  is  no  danger  of  our 
becoming,  any  of  us,  INIahometans,  I  mean  to  say  all 
the  good  of  him  I  justly  can.  It  is  the  way  to  get  at 
his  secret :  let  us  try  to  understand  what  he  meant 
with  the  world ;  what  the  world  meant  and  means 
with  him,  will  then  be  a  more  answerable  question. 
Our  current  hypothesis  about  Mahomet,  that  he  was 
a  scheming  Impostor,  a  Falsehood  incarnate,  that  his 
religion  is  a  mere  mass  of  quackery  and  fatuity,  be- 
gins really  to  be  now  untenable  to  any  one.  The  lies, 
which  well-meaning  zeal  has  heaped  round  this  man, 
are  disgracefid  to  ourselves  only.  When  Pocock  ^ 
inquired  of  Grotius,^  Where  the  proof  was  of  that 
story  of  the  pigeon,  trained  to  pick  peas  from  Ma- 
homet's ear,  and  pass  for  an  angel  dictating  to  him  ? 
Grotius  answered  that  there  was  no  proof !  It  is 
really  time  to  dismiss  all  that.  The  word  this  man 
spoke  has  been  the  life-guidance  now  of  a  hundred- 
and-eighty  millions  of  men  these  twelve-hundred  years. 
These  hundred-and-eighty  millions  were  made  by  God 
as  well  as  we.    A  greater  number  of  God's  creatures 

1  A  very  distinguished  scholar  of  Oriental  literature  and  his- 
tory (1604-1691).  His  Specimen  Historice  Arahum  (1649)  was  the 
fruit  of  many  years  of  scholarly  activity  in  the  Orient. 

2  Hugo  de  Groot  (1583-1645),  Dutch  jurist  and  scholar. 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  61 

believe  in  Mahomet's  word  at  this  hour,  than  in  any 
other  word  whatever.  Are  we  to  suppose  that  it  was 
a  miserable  piece  of  spiritual  legerdemain,  this  which 
so  many  creatures  of  the  Almighty  have  lived  by  and 
died  by  ?  I,  for  my  part,  cannot  form  any  such  sup- 
position. I  will  believe  most  things  sooner  than  that. 
One  would  be  entirely  at  a  loss  what  to  think  of  this 
world  at  all,  if  quackery  so  grew  and  were  sanctioned 
here. 

Alas,  such  theories  are  very  lamentable.  If  we 
would  attain  to  knowledge  of  anything  in  God's 
true  Creation,  let  us  disbelieve  them  wholly !  They 
are  the  product  of  an  Age  of  Scepticism  ;  ^  they  indi- 
cate the  saddest  spiritual  paralysis,  and  mere  death- 
life  of  the  souls  of  men  :  more  godless  theory,  I  think, 
was  never  promulgated  in  this  Earth.  A  false  man 
found  a  religion  ?  Why,  a  false  man  cannot  build 
a  brick  house  I  If  he  do  not  know  and  follow  ttmly 
the  properties  of  mortar,  burnt  clay  and  what  else  he 
works  in,  it  is  no  house  that  he  makes,  but  a  rubbish- 
heap.  It  will  not  stand  for  twelve  centuries,  to  lodge 
a  hundred-and-eighty  millions  ;  it  will  fall  straight- 
way. A  man  must  conform  himself  to  Nature's  laws, 
he  verily  in  communion  with  Nature  and  the  truth 
of  things,  or  Nature  will  answer  him.  No,  not  at  all ! 
Speciosities  are  specious — ah  me!  —  a  Cagliostro,^ 
many  Cagiiostros,  prominent  world-leaders,  do  pros- 

^  Carlyle  so  names  the  eighteenth  century.    See  p.  237. 

2  Giuseppe  Balsaino  (1743-1795).  He  styled  himself  Count 
Cagliostro,  and  prospered  for  a  while  in  an  extraordinarily  suc- 
cessful career  of  charlatanism.  The  best  account  of  his  pro- 
ceedings is  in  Carlyle's  essays  on  Cagliostro  and  The  Diamond 
Necklace. 


62  LECTITRES  ON  HEROES 

per  by  tlieir  quackery,  for  a  day.  It  is  like  a  forged 
bank-note ;  they  get  it  passed  out  of  their  worthless 
hands  :  others,  not  the}^,  have  to  smart  for  it.  Nature 
bursts-up  in  fire-flames,  French  Revolutions  and  such- 
like, proclaiming  with  terrible  veracity  that  forged 
notes  are  forged. 

But  of  a  Great  Man  especially,  of  him  I  will  ven- 
ture to  assert  that  it  is  incredible  he  should  have  been 
other  than  true.  It  seems  to  me  the  primary  founda- 
tion of  him,  and  of  all  that  can  lie  in  him,  this.  No 
Mirabeau,^  Napoleon,  Burns,  Cromwell,  no  man  ade- 
quate to  do  anything,  but  is  first  of  all  in  right  ear- 
nest about  it ;  what  I  call  a  sincere  man.  I  should  say 
sincerity,  a  deep,  great,  genuine  sincerity,  is  the  first 
characteristic  of  all  men  in  any  way  heroic.  Not  the 
sincerity  that  calls  itself  sincere  ;  ah  no,  that  is  a  very 
poor  matter  indeed  ;  —  a  shallow  braggart  conscious 
sincerity ;  oftenest  self-conceit  mainly.  The  Great 
Man's  sincerity  is  of  the  kind  he  cannot  sjjeak  of,  is 
not  conscious  of :  nay,  I  suppose,  he  is  conscious  rather 
of  i/isincerity  ;  for  what  man  can  walk  accurately  by 
the  law  of  truth  for  one  day  ?  No,  the  Great  Man  does 
not  boast  himself  sincere,  far  from  that ;  perhaps  does 
not  ask  himself  if  he  is  so :  I  would  say  rather,  his 
sincerity  does  not  depend  on  himself  ;  he  cannot  help 
being  sincere !  The  great  Fact  of  Existence  is  great 
to  him.  Fly  as  he  wiU,  he  cannot  get  out  of  the  awful 
presence  of  this  Reality.    His  mind  is  so  made  ;  he  is 

^  1749-1791.  The  ablest  and  most  influential  member  of  the 
French  Asseniblj'  at  the  time  of  the  Revohition.  He  was  Presi- 
dent of  the  Jacobin  Club,  but  opposed  the  headlong  radicalism 
that  it  developed.    See  Carlyle's  Essay  on  Mirabeau  (1837). 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  63 

great  by  that,  first  of  all.  Fearful  and  wonderful,  real 
as  Life,  real  as  Death,  is  this  Universe  to  him.  Though 
all  men  should  forget  its  truth,  and  walk  in  a  vain 
show,  he  cannot.  At  all  moments  the  Flame-image 
glares-in  upon  him  ;  undeniable,  there,  there  !  —  I  wish 
yon  to  take  this  as  my  primary  definition  of  a  Great 
Man.  A  little  man  may  have  this,  it  is  competent  to 
all  men  that  God  has  made  :  but  a  Great  Man  cannot 
be  without  it. 

Such  a  man  is  what  we  caU  an  origiiial  man  ;  he 
comes  to  us  at  first-hand.  A  messenger  he,  sent  from 
the  Infinite  Unknown  ^  with  tidings  to  us.  We  may 
call  him  Poet,  Prophet,  God  ;  —  in  one  way  or  other,  we 
all  feel  that  the  words  he  utters  are  as  no  other  man's 
words.  Direct  from  the  Inner  Fact  of  things ;  —  he 
lives,  and  has  to  live,  in  daily  communion  with  that. 
Hearsays  cannot  hide  it  from  him  ;  he  is  blind,  home- 
less, miserable,  following  ^  hearsays  ;  it  glares-in  upon 
him.  Really  his  utterances,  are  they  not  a  kind  of  '  rev- 
elation ; '  —  what  we  must  call  such  for  want  of  some 
other  name  ?  It  is  from  the  heart  of  the  world  that  he 
comes  ;  he  is  a  portion  of  the  primal  reality  of  things. 
God  has  made  many  revelations  :  but  this  man  too,  has 
not  God  made  him,  the  latest  and  newest  of  all  ?  The 
'  inspiration  of  the  Almighty  giveth  him  understand- 
ing : '  we  must  listen  before  all  to  him. 

This  Mahomet,  then,  we  v/ill  in  no  wise  consider  as 
an  Inanity  and  Theatricality,  a  poor  conscious  ambi- 
tious schemer  ;  we  cannot  conceive  him  so.  The  rude 
message  he  delivered  was  a  real  one  withal ;  an  earnest 

^  Comp.  pp.  10,  11.  2  Conditional,  =  "  if  he  follow." 


64  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

confused  voice  from  the  unknown  Deep.  The  man's 
words  were  not  false,  nor  his  workings  liere  below  ;  no 
Inanity  and  Simulacrum ;  a  fiery,  mass  of  Life  cast-up 
from  the  great  bosom  of  Nature  herself.  To  kindle 
the  world  ;  the  world's  Maker  had  ordered  it  so.  Neither 
can  the  faults,  imperfections,  insincerities  even,  of  ]\Ia- 
homet,  if  such  were  never  so  well  proved  against  him, 
shake  this  primary  fact  about  him. 

On  the  whole,  we  make  too  much  of  faults ;  the 
details  of  the  business  hide  the  real  centre  of  it. 
Faults  ?  The  greatest  of  faults,  I  should  say,  is  to  be 
conscious  of  none.  Readers  of  the  Bible  above  all,  one 
would  think,  might  know  better.  Who  is  called  there 
'  the  man  according  to  God's  own  heart '  ?  David, 
the  Hebrew  King,  had  fallen  into  sins  enough ;  black- 
est crimes ;  there  was  no  want  of  sins.  And  there- 
upon the  unbelievers  sneer  and  ask.  Is  this  your  man 
according  to  God's  heart?  The  sneer,  I  must  say, 
seems  to  me  but  a  shallow  one.  What  are  faults, 
what  are  the  outward  details  of  a  life ;  if  the  inner 
secret  of  it,  the  remorse,  temptations,  true,  often- 
baffled,  never-ended  struggle  of  it,  be  forgotten  ?  '  It 
is  not  in  man  that  walketh  to  direct  his  steps.'  Of 
all  acts,  is  not,  for  a  man,  repentance  the  most  divine  ? 
The  deadliest  sin,  I  say,  were  that  same  supercilious 
consciousness  of  no  sin  ;  —  that  is  death ;  the  heart 
so  conscious  is  divorced  from  sincerity,  humility  and 
fact ;  is  dead  :  it  is  '  pure  '  as  dead  dry  sand  is  pure. 
David's  life  and  history,  as  written  for  us  in  those 
Psalms  of  his,  I  consider  to  be  the  truest  emblem 
ever  given  of  a  man's  moral  progress  and  warfare 
here  below.    All  earnest  souls  will  ever  discern  in  it 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  65 

the  faithful  struggle  of  an  earnest  human  soul  to- 
wards what  is  good  and  best.  Struggle  often  baffled, 
sore  baffled,  down  as  into  entire  wreck  ;  yet  a  struggle 
never  ended ;  ever,  with  tears,  repentance,  true  un- 
conquerable purpose,  begun  anew.  Poor  human  na- 
ture !  Is  not  a  man's  walking,  in  truth,  always  that : 
'  a  succession  of  falls '  ?  Man  can  do  no  other.  In  this 
wild  element  of  a  Life,  he  has  to  struggle  onwards ; 
now  fallen,  deep-abased ;  and  ever,  with  tears,  repent- 
ance, with  bleeding  heart,  he  has  to  rise  again, 
struggle  again  still  onwards.  That  his  struggle  he  a 
faithfid  unconquerable  one:  that  is  the  question  of 
questions.  We  will  put-up  with  many  sad  details,  if 
the  soul  of  it  were  true.  Details  by  themselves  will 
never  teach  us  what  it  is.  I  believe  we  misestimate 
Mahomet's  faults  even  as  faults :  but  the  secret  of 
liim  will  never  be  got  by  dwelling  there.  We  wiU 
leave  all  this  behind  us ;  and  assuring  ourselves  that 
he  did  mean  some  true  thing,  ask  candidly  what  it 
was  or  might  be. 

These  Arabs  Mahomet  was  born  among  are  cer- 
tainly a  notable  people.  Their  country  itself  is  not- 
able ;  the  fit  habitation  for  such  a  race.  Savage 
inaccessible  rock-mountains,  great  grim  deserts,  al- 
ternating with  beautiful  strips  of  verdure :  wherever 
water  is,  there  is  greenness,  beauty  ;  odoriferous  balm- 
shrubs,  date-trees,  frankincense-trees.  Consider  that 
wide  waste  horizon  of  sand,  empty,  silent,  like  a  sand- 
sea,  dividing  habitable  place  from  habitable.  You 
are  ^11  alone  there,  left  alone  with  the  Universe ;  by 
day  a  fierce  sun  blazing  down  on  it  with  intolerable 


6Q  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

radiance  ;  by  night  the  great  deep  Heaven  with  its 
stars.  Such  a  country  is  fit  for  a  swift-handed,  deep- 
hearted  race  of  men.  There  is  something  most  agile, 
active,  and  yet  most  meditative,  enthusiastic  in  the 
Arab  character.  The  Persians  are  called  the  French 
of  the  East ;  we  will  call  the  Arabs  Oriental  Italians. 
A  gifted  noble  people ;  a  people  of  wild  strong  feel- 
ings, and  of  iron  restraint  over  these  :  the  characteris- 
tic of  noblemindedness,  of  genius.  The  wild  Bedouin 
welcomes  the  stranger  to  his  tent,  as  one  having  right 
to  all  that  is  there ;  were  it  his  worst  enemy,  he  will 
slay  his  foal  to  treat  him,  will  serve  him  with  sacred 
hospitality  for  three  days,  will  set  him  fairly  on  his 
way  ;  —  and  then,  by  another  law  as  sacred,  kill  him 
if  he  can.  In  words  too,  as  in  action.  They  are  not 
a  loquacious  peoj^le,  taciturn  rather ;  but  eloquent, 
gifted  when  they  do  speak.  An  earnest,  truthful  kind 
of  men.  They  are,  we  know,  of  Jewish  kindred : 
but  with  that  deadly  terrible  earnestness  of  the  Jews, 
they  seem  to  combine  something  graceful,  brilliant, 
which  is  not  Jewish.  They  had  '  Poetic  contests ' 
among  them  before  the  time  of  Mahomet.  Sale  ^  says, 
at  Oeadh,  in  the  South  of  Arabia,  there  were  yearly 
fairs,  and  there,  when  the  merchandising  was  done, 
Poets  sang  for  prizes  :  —  the  wild  people  gathered  to 
hear  that. 

One  Jewish  quality  these  Arabs  manifest ;  the  out- 
come of  many  or  of  all  high  qualities :  what  we  may 
call  religiosity.  From  of  old  they  had  been  zealous  wor- 

1  1690-1736.  To  his  translation  of  the  Koran  (1731)  he  pre- 
fixed a  Preliminary  Discourse  on  Arab  history,  religion,  etc.  His 
interpretation  of  Mahomet's  character  is  friendly. 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  67 

shippers,  according  to  their  light.  They  worshipped 
the  stars,  as  Sabeans ;  ^  worshipped  many  natural  ob- 
jects, —  recognised  them  as  symbols,  immediate  man- 
ifestations, of  the  Maker  of  Nature.  It  was  wrong ; 
and  yet  not  wholly  wrong.  All  God's  works  are  still 
in  a  sense  symbols  of  God.  Do  we  not,  as  I  urged, 
still  account  it  a  merit  to  recognise  a  certain  inexhaus- 
tible significance, '  poetic  beauty '  as  we  name  it,  in  all 
natural  objects  whatsoever  ?  A  man  is  a  poet,  and 
honoured,  for  doing  that,  and  speaking  or  singing 
it,  —  a  kind  of  diluted  worship.  They  had  many  Pro- 
phets, these  Arabs ;  Teachers  each  to  his  tribe,  each 
according  to  the  light  he  had.  But  indeed,  have  we 
not  from  of  old  the  noblest  of  proofs,  still  palpable  to 
every  one  of  us,  of  what  devoutness  and  noblemind- 
edness  had  dwelt  in  these  rustic  thoughtful  peoples  ? 
Biblical  critics  seem  agreed  that  our  own  Booh  of  Joh 
was  written  in  that  region  of  the  world.  I  call  that, 
apart  from  all  theories  about  it,  one  of  the  grandest 
things  ever  written  with  pen.  One  feels,  indeed,  as  if 
it  were  not  Hebrew  ;  such  a  noble  universality,  differ- 
ent from  noble  patriotism  or  sectarianism,  reigns  in  it. 
A  noble  Book ;  all  men's  Book  !  It  is  our  first,  old- 
est statement  of  the  never-ending  Problem,  —  man's 
destiny,  and  God's  ways  with  him  here  in  this  earth. 
And  all  in  such  free  flowing  outlines  ;  grand  in  its  sin- 
cerity, in  its  simplicity  ;  in  its  epic  melody,  and  repose 
of  reconcilement.  There  is  the  seeing  eye,  the  mildly 
understanding  heart.  So  true  everyway  ;  true  eyesight 
and  vision  for  all  things ;  material  things  no  less  than 
spiritual ;  the  Horse,  —  '  hast  thou  clothed  his  neck 
1  See  p.  12,  n.  4. 


68  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

with  thunder  ? ' —  he  '  laughs  at  the  shaking  of  the 
spear ! '  Such  living  likenesses  were  never  since  drawn. 
Snblime  sorrow,  sublime  reconciliation  ;  oldest  choral 
melody  as  of  the  heart  of  mankind  ;  —  so  soft,  and 
great ;  as  the  summer  midnight,  as  the  world  with  its 
seas  and  stars !  There  is  nothing  written,  I  think,  in 
the  Bible  or  out  of  it,  of  equal  literary  merit.  — 

To  the  idolatrous  Arabs  one  of  the  most  ancient 
universal  objects  of  worship  was  that  Black  Stone,  still 
kept  in  the  building  called  Caabah  ^  at  Mecca.  Diodo- 
rus  Siculus  2  mentions  this  Caabah  in  a  way  not  to 
be  mistaken,  as  the  oldest,  most  honoured  temi^le  in 
his  time ;  that  is,  some  half -century  before  our  Era. 
Silvestre  de  Sacy  says  there  is  some  likelihood  that 
the  Black  Stone  is  an  aerolite.  In  that  case,  some  man 
might  see  it  fall  out  of  Heaven  !  It  stands  now  beside 
the  Well  Zemzem  ;  the  Caabah  is  built  over  both.  A 
Well  is  in  all  places  a  beautiful  affecting  object,  gush- 
ing out  like  life  from  the  hard  earth  ;  —  still  more  so 
in  those  hot  diy  countries,  where  it  is  the  first  condi- 
tion of  being.  The  Well  Zemzem  has  its  name  from 
the  bubbling  sound  of  the  waters,  zem-zem ;  the}^  think 
it  is  tlie  Well  which  Hagar  '^  found  with   her   little 

^  A  cubical  structure,  "  twenty-seven  cubits  "  (about  forty 
feet)  each  way,  in  the  centre  of  the  court  of  the  great  Mosque  at 
Mecca.  Into  the  wall,  at  a  height  convenient  for  kissing,  is 
built  the  famous  Black  Stone  (probably  a  meteorite),  an  object 
of  supreme  veneration. 

^  Historian,  first  century  B.  c.  His  Historical  Library  is  a  his- 
tory of  the  world  to  B.  c.  GO. 

^  Hagar,  the  maid  of  Abraham's  wife,  Sarah,  bore  a  son,  Ish- 
mael,  to  Abraham.  After  the  birth  of  Sarah's  son,  Isaac,  Hagar 
and  Ishmael  at  the  demand  of  Sarah  were  cast  out  into  the  wil- 
derness.   When  they   were  perishing  for  lack  of  water,  "  God 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  69 

Islimael  in  the  wilderness :  the  aerolite  and  it  have 
been  sacred  now,  and  had  a  Caabah  over  them,  for 
thousands  of  years.  A  curious  object,  that  Caabah  ! 
There  it  stands  at  this  hour,  in  the  black  cloth-cover- 
ing the  Sultan  sends  it  yearly ;  '  twenty-seven  cubits 
high ; '  with  circuit,  with  double  circuit  of  pillars, 
with  festoon-rows  of  lamps  and  quaint  ornaments;  the 
lamps  will  be  lighted  again  this  night,  —  to  glitter 
again  under  the  stars.  An  authentic  fragment  of  the 
oldest  Past.  It  is  the  Kehlah  ^  of  all  Moslem:  from 
Delhi  all  onwards  to  Morocco,^  the  eyes  of  innumer- 
able praying  men  are  turned  towards  it  five  times, 
this  day  and  all  days :  one  of  the  notablest  centres  in 
the  Habitation  of  Men. 

It  had  been  from  the  sacredness  attached  to  this 
Caabah  Stone  and  Hagar's  Well,  from  the  pilgrimings 
of  all  tribes  of  Arabs  thither,  that  Mecca  ^  took  its 
rise  as  a  Town.  A  great  town  once,  though  much  de- 
cayed now.  It  has  no  natural  advantage  for  a  town  ; 
stands  in  a  sandy  hollow  amid  bare  barren  hills,  at  a 
distance  from  the  sea ;  its  provisions,  its  very  bread, 
have  to  be  imported.  But  so  many  pilgrims  needed 
lodgings :  and  then  all  places  of  pilgrimage  do,  from 
the  first,  become  places  of  trade.  The  first  day  pil- 
grims meet,  merchants  have  also  met ;  where  men  see 

opened  her  eyes,  and  she  saw  a  well  of  water  ;  and  she  .  .  .  gave 
the  lad  drink.  .  .  .  and  he  grew,  and  dwelt  in  the  wilderness." 
Cf.  Genesis xxi,  19,20.    And  see  alsochaps.xvi,xvii,xxi,xxv,entire. 

^  The  direction  toward  which  the  face  is  turned  in  prayer. 

2  The  whole  Moslem  world,  from  British  India  to  Western 
Africa. 

*  In  western  Arabia,  a  little  over  forty  miles  inland  from  the 
Red  Sea. 


70  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

themselves  assembled  for  one  object,  they  find  that 
they  can  accomplish  other  objects  which  depend  on 
meeting  together.  Mecca  became  the  Fair  of  all  Ara- 
bia. And  thereby  indeed  the  chief  staple  and  ware- 
house of  whatever  Commerce  there  was  between  the 
Indian  and  the  Western  countries,  Syria,  Eg}"}it,  even 
Italy.  It  had  at  one  time  a  population  of  100,000  ; 
buyers,  forwarders  of  those  Eastern  and  Western  pro- 
ducts ;  importers  for  their  own  behoof  of  provisions 
and  corn.  The  government  was  a  kind  of  irregular 
aristocratic  republic,  not  without  a  touch  of  theocracy. 
Ten  Men  of  a  chief  tribe,  chosen  in  some  rough  way, 
were  Governors  of  Mecca,  and  Keej^ers  of  the  Caabah. 
The  Koreish  were  the  chief  tribe  in  Mahomet's  time ; 
his  own  family  was  of  that  tribe.  The  rest  of  the 
Nation,  fractioned  and  cut-asunder  by  deserts,  lived 
under  similar  rude  patriarchal  governments  by  one  or 
several :  herdsmen,  carriers,  traders,  generally  robbers 
too ;  being  of tenest  at  war  one  with  another,  or  with  all : 
held  together  by  no  open  bond,  if  it  were  not  this  meet- 
ing at  the  Caabah,  where  all  forms  of  Arab  Idolatry 
assembled  in  common  adoration  ;  —  held  mainly  by  the 
imvarcl  indissoluble  bond  of  a  common  blood  and  lan- 
guage. In  this  way  had  the  Arabs  lived  for  long  ages, 
unnoticed  by  the  world ;  a  people  of  great  qualities, 
unconsciously  waiting  for  the  day  when  they  should 
become  notable  to  all  the  world.  Their  Idolatries 
appear  to  have  been  in  a  tottering  state ;  much  w^as 
getting  into  confusion  and  fermentation  among  them. 
Obscure  tidings  of  the  most  important  Event  ever  trans- 
acted in  this  world,  the  Life  and  Death  of  the  Divine 
Man  in  Judea,  at  once  the  symptom  and  cause  of  im- 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  71 

measurable  change  to  all  people  in  the  world,  had  in 
the  course  of  centuries  reached  into  Arabia  too ;  and 
could  not  but,  of  itsslf,  have  produced  fermentation 
there. 

It  was  among  this  Arab  people,  so  circumstanced,  in 
the  year  570  of  our  Era,  that  the  man  Mahomet  was 
born.  He  was  of  the  family  of  Hashem,  of  the  Koreish 
tribe  as  we  said ;  though  poor,  connected  with  the  chief 
persons  of  his  country.  Almost  at  ^  his  birth  he  lost 
his  Father ;  at  the  age  of  six  years  his  Mother  too,  a 
woman  noted  for  her  beauty,  her  worth  and  sense :  he 
fell  to  the  charge  of  his  Grandfather,  an  old  man, 
a  hundred  years  old.  A  good  old  man :  Mahomet's 
Father,  Abdallah,  had  been  his  youngest  favourite  son. 
He  saw  in  Mahomet,  with  his  old  life-worn  eyes,  a  cen- 
tury old,  the  lost  Abdallah  come  back  again,  all  that 
was  left  of  Abdallah.  He  loved  the  little  orphan  Boy 
greatly ;  used  to  say,  They  must  take  care  of  that 
beautiful  little  Boy,  nothing  in  their  kindred  was  more 
precious  than  he.  At  his  death,  while  the  boy  was  still 
but  two  years  old,^  he  left  him  in  charge  to  Abu 
Thaleb  the  eldest  of  the  Uncles,  as  to  him  that  now 
was  head  of  the  house.  By  this  Uncle,  a  just  and 
rational  man  as  everything  betokens,  Mahomet  was 
brought-up  in  the  best  Arab  way. 

Mahomet,  as  he  grew  up,  accompanied  his  Uncle  on 
trading  journeys  and  suchlike ;  in  his  eighteenth  year 

^  111  fact,  two  months  before. 

^  This  is  not,  as  appears  at  first  sight,  inconsistent  with  the 
statement  above  about  his  mother  ;  not  the  mother,  but  the 
grandfather,  as  head  of  the  house,  became  guardian  immediately 
upon  the  father's  death. 


72  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

one  finds  him  a  fighter  following  his  Uncle  in  war. 
But  perhaps  the  most  significant  of  all  his  journeys  is 
one  we  find  noted  as  of  some  years'  earlier  date :  a 
journey  to  the  Fairs  of  Syria.  The  young  man  here 
first  came  in  contact  with  a  quite  foreign  world,  — 
with  one  foreign  element  of  endless  moment  to  him : 
the  Christian  Keligion.  I  know  not  what  to  make  of 
that '  Sergius,  the  Nestorian  Monk,'  whom  Abu  Thaleb 
and  he  are  said  to  have  lodged  with ;  or  how  much 
any  monk  could  have  taught  one  still  so  young.  Prob- 
ably enough  it  is  greatly  exaggerated,  this, of  the  Nes- 
torian ^  Monk.  Mahomet  was  only  fourteen ;  had  no 
language  but  his  own  :  much  in  Syria  must  have  been 
a  strange  unmtelligible  whirlpool  to  him.  But  the 
eyes  of  the  lad  were  open  ;  glimpses  of  many  things 
would  doubtless  be  taken-in,  and  lie  very  enigmatic  as 
yet,  which  were  to  ripen  in  a  strange  way  into  views, 
into  beliefs  and  insights  one  day.  These  journeys  to 
Syria  were  probably  the  beginning  of  much  to  Mahomet. 
One  other  circumstance  we  must  not  forget:  that 
he  had  no  school-learning  ;  of  the  thing  we  call  school- 
learning  none  at  all.  The  art  of  writing  was  but  just 
introduced  into  Arabia ;  it  seems  to  be  the  true  opin- 
ion that  Mahomet  never  could  write !  Life  in  the 
Desert,  with  its  experiences,  was  all  his  education. 
What  of  this  infinite  Universe  he,  from  his  dim  place, 
with  his  own  eyes  and  thoughts,  could  take  in,  so 
much  and  no  more  of  it  was  he  to  know.  Curious,  if 
we  will  reflect  on  it,  this  of  having  no  books.  Except 
by  what  he  could  see  for  himself,  or  hear  of  by  uncer- 

^  The  Nestorians  were  a  sect  of  the  Early  Church,  so  named 
from  Nestorius,  their  most  conspicuous  representative. 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  73 

tain  rumour  of  speech  in  the  obscure  Aiabi.n  Desert, 
he  coukl  know  nothing.  The  wisdom  that  had  been 
before  him  or  at  a  distance  from  him  in  the  world, 
was  in  a  manner  as  good  as  not  there  for  him.  Of  the 
great  brother  souls,  flame-beacons  through  so  many 
lands  and  times,  no  one  directly  conununicates  with 
this  great  soul.  He  is  alone  there,  deep  down  in  the 
bosom  of  the  Wilderness  ;  has  to  grow  up  so,  —  alone 
with  Nature  and  his  own  Thoughts. 

But,  from  an  early  age,  he  had  been  remarked  as 
a  thoughtful  man.  His  companions  named  him  '•Al 
Amin,  The  Faithful.'  A  maji  of  truth  and  fidelity ; 
true  in  what  he  did,  in  what  he  spake  and  thought. 
They  noted  that  he  always  meant  something.  A  man 
rather  taciturn  in  speech  ;  silent  when  there  was  no- 
thing to  be  said ;  but  pertinent,  wise,  sincere,  when 
he  did  speak ;  always  thro\ving  light  on  the  matter. 
This  is  the  only  sort  of  speech  worth  speaking !  Through 
life  we  find  him  to  have  been  i-egarded  as  an  altogether 
solid,  brotherly,  genuine  man.  A  serious,  sincere 
character  ;  yet  amiable,  cordial,  companionable,  jocose 
even  ;  —  a  good  laugh  in  him  withal :  there  are  men 
whose  laugh  is  as  untrue  as  anything  about  them  ; 
who  cannot  laugh.  One  hears  of  Mahomet's  beauty : 
his  fine  sagacious  honest  face,  brown  florid  complexion, 
beaming  black  eyes  ;  —  I  somehow  like  too  that  vein 
on  the  brow,  which  swelled-up  black  when  he  was 
in  anger :  like  the  '  horse-shoe  vein '  in  Scott's  lied- 
gauntlet.  It  was  a  kind  of  feature  in  the  Hashem 
family,  this  black  swelling  vein  in  the  brow  ;  Mahomet 
had  it  prominent,  as  would  appear.  A  spontaneous, 
passionate,  yet  just,  true-meaning  man !    Full  of  wild 


74  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

faculty,  fire  and  light ;  of  wild  worth,  all  uncultured ; 
working  out  his  life-task  in  the  depths  of  the  Desert 
there. 

How  he  was  placed  with  Kadijah,  a  rich  Widow,  as 
her  Steward,  and  travelled  in  her  business,  again  to 
the  Fairs  of  Syria  ;  how  he  managed  all,  as  one  can 
well  understand,  with  fidelity,  adroitness ;  how  her 
gratitude,  her  regard  for  him  grew :  the  story  of  their 
marriage  ^  is  altogether  a  graceful  intelligible  one,  as 
told  us  by  the  Arab  authors.  He  was  twenty-five  ;  she 
forty,  though  still  beautiful.  He  seems  to  have  lived  in 
a  most  affectionate,  peaceable,  wholesome  way  with 
this  wedded  benefactress ;  loving  her  truly,  and  her 
alone.  It  goes  greatly  against  the  impostor  theory, 
the  fact  that  he  lived  in  this  entirely  unexceptionable, 
entirely  quiet  and  commonplace  way,  till  the  heat  of 
his  years  was  done.  He  was  forty  before  he  talked  of 
any  mission  from  Heaven.  All  his  irregularities,  real 
and  supposed,  date  fi-om  after  his  fiftieth  year,  when 
the  good  Kadijah  died.  All  his  '  ambition,'  seemingly, 
had  been,  hitherto,  to  live  an  honest  life  ;  his '  fame,' 
the  mere  good  opinion  of  neighbours  that  knew  him, 
had  been  sufficient  hitherto.  Not  till  he  was  already 
getting  old,  the  prurient  heat  of  his  *life  all  burnt  out, 
and  ^je«ce  growing  to  be  the  chief  thing  this  world 
could  give  him,  did  he  start  on  the  '  career  of  ambi- 
tion ; '  and,  belying  all  his  past  character  and  exist- 
ence, set  up  as  a  wretched  empty  charlatan  to  acquire 
what  he  could  now  no  longer  enjoy !  For  my  share,  I 
have  no  faith  whatever  in  that. 

Ah  no :  this  deep-hearted  Son  of  the  Wilderness, 
1  In  595  or  596. 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  75 

with  Ills  beaming  black  eyes  and  open  social  deep  soul, 
had  other  thoughts  in  him  than  ambition.  A  silent 
great  soul ;  he  was  one  of  those  who  cannot  but  be  in 
earnest ;  whom  Nature  herself  has  appointed  to  be  sin- 
cere. While  others  walk  in  formulas  and  hearsays, 
contented  enough  to  dwell  there,  this  man  could  not 
screen  himself  in  formulas  ;  he  was  alone  with  his  own 
soul  and  the  reality  of  things.  The  great  Mystery  of  Ex- 
istence, as  I  said,  glared-in  upon  him,  with  its  terrors, 
with  its  splendours ;  no  hearsays  could  hide  that  un- 
speakable fact.  "  Here  am  I ! "  Such  sincerity,  as  we 
named  it,  has  in  very  truth  something  of  divine.  The 
word  of  such  a  man  is  a  Voice  direct  from  Nature's  own 
Heart.  Men  do  and  must  listen  to  that  as  to  nothing 
else ;  —  all  else  is  wind  in  comparison.  From  of  old,  a 
thousand  thoughts,  in  his  pilgrimings  and  wanderings, 
had  been  in  this  man  :  AVhat  am  I  ?  What  is  this  un- 
fathomable Thing  I  live  in,  which  men  name  Uni- 
verse ?  What  is  Life  ;  what  is  Death  ?  What  am  I  to 
believe  ?  What  am  I  to  do  ?  The  grim  rocks  of  Mount 
Hara,^  of  Mount  Sinai,^  the  stern  sandy  solitudes  an- 
swered not.  The  great  Heaven  rolling  silent  over- 
head, with  its  blue-glancing  stars,  answered  not.  There 
was  no  answer.  The  man's  own  soul  and  what  of  God's 
inspiration  dwelt  there,  had  to  answer ! 

It  is  the  thing  which  all  men  have  to  ask  themselves  ; 
which  we  too  have  to  ask,  and  answer.  This  wild  man 
felt  it  to  be  of  inftiiite  moment ;  all  otlier  things  of  no 

^  Near  Mecca. 

^  In  the  southern  part  of  the  peninsula  east  of  the  Gulf  of 
Suez.  See  Genesis  xix,  for  the  experiences  of  another  Hero- 
Prophet  on  its  "  grim  rocks." 


76  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

moment  whatever  in  comparison.  The  jargon  of  argu- 
mentative Greek  Sects,  vague  traditions  of  Jews,  the 
stupid  routine  of  Arab  Idolatry  :  there  was  no  answer 
in  these.  A  Hero,  as  I  repeat,  has  this  first  distinction, 
which  indeed  we  may  call  first  and  last,  the  Alpha  and 
Omega  of  his  whole  Heroism,  That  he  looks  through 
the  shows  of  things  into  thinf/s.  Use  and  wont,  re- 
spectable hearsay,  respectable  formula:  all  these  are 
good,  or  are  not  good.  There  is  something  behind  and 
beyond  'all  these,  which  all  these  must  correspond  with, 
be  the  image  of,  or  they  are  —  Idolatries  ;  '  bits  of 
black  wood  pretending  to  be  God  ; '  to  the  earnest 
soul  a  mockery  and  abomination.  Idolatries  never  so 
gilded  waited  on  by  heads  of  the  Koreish,  will  do  no- 
thing for  this  man.  Though  all  men  walk  by  them, 
what  good  is  it?  The  great  Reality  stands  glaring 
there  upon  hbn.  He  there  has  to  answer  it,  or  perish 
miserably.  Now,  even  now,  or  else  through  aU  Eternity 
never !  Answer  it ;  thoii  must  find  an  answer.  —  Am- 
bition ?  What  could  all  Ai*abia  do  for  this  man  ;  with 
the  crown  of  Greek  Heraclius,^  of  Persian  Chosroes, 
and  all  crowns  in  the  Earth  ;  —  what  could  they  all  do 
for  him  ?  It  was  not  of  the  Earth  he  wanted  to  hear 
tell ;  it  was  of  the  Heaven  above  and  of  the  Hell 
beneath.  All  crowns  and  sovereignties  whatsoever, 
where  would  theij  in  a  few  brief  years  be?  To  be 
Sheik  2  of  Mecca  or  Arabia,  and  have  a  bit  of  gilt 
wood  put  into  your  hand,  —  will  that  be  one's  salva 

^  B\zaiitine  Emperor  from  610  to  641.  He  defeated  the  Per- 
sians under  Cliosroes  II,  in  the  Battle  of  Nineveh,  627,  the  fifth 
year  of  the  Mohammedan  era. 

^  Tribal  head  ;  also  a  religious  dignitary. 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  77 

tlon?  I  decidedly  think  not.  We  will  leave  it  alto- 
gether, this  impostor  hypothesis,  as  not  credible ;  not 
very  tolerable  even,  woi'thy  chiefly  of  dismissal  by  us, 
Mahomet  had  been  wont  to  retire  yearly,  during 
the  month  Ramadhan,  into  solitude  and  silence  ;  as 
indeed  was  the  Arab  custom  ;  a  praiseworthy  custom, 
which  such  a  man,  above  all,  would  find  natural  and 
useful.  Communing  with  his  own  heart,  in  the  silence 
of  the  mountains ;  himself  silent ;  open  to  the  '  small 
still  voices :  '  it  was  a  right  natural  custom !  Mahomet 
was  in  his  fortieth  year,  when  having  withdrawn  to  a 
cavern  in  Mount  Hara,  near  Mecca,  during  this  Rama- 
dhan,^  to  pass  the  month  in  pi-ayer,  and  meditation 
on  those  great  question's,  he  one  day  told  his  wife 
Kadijah,  who  with  his  household  was  with  him  or  near 
him  this  year.  That  by  the  unspeakable  special  favour 
of  Heaven  he  had  now  found  it  all  out ;  was  in  doubt 
and  dai'kness  no  longer,  but  saw  it  all.  That  all  these 
Idols  and  Formulas  were  nothing,  miserable  bits  of 
wood ;  that  there  was  One  God  in  and  over  all ;  and 
we  must  leave  all  Idols,  and  look  to  Him.  That  God 
is  great ;  and  that  there  is  nothing  else  great  I  He  is 
the  Reality.  Wooden  Idols  are  not  real ;  He  is  real. 
He  made  us  at  first,  sustains  us  yet ;  we  and  all 
things  are  but  the  shadow  of  Him ;  a  transitory  gar- 
ment veiling  the  Eternal  Splendour.  '  Alla\,  akbar, 
God  is  great ; '  —  and  then  also  '  Islam,^  ^  Th^t  we 
must  submit  to  God.    That  our  whole  strength  lies,  in 

^  The  days  of  this  month,  which  comes  at  various  seasons  of  the 
year,  according  to  the  lunar  calendar,  are  observed  by  all  Mussul- 
mans as  an  absolute  fast  from  dawn  to  sunset. 

^  Resignation,  surrendering.    See  New  Eng.  Diet. 


78  LECTURES    ON   HEROES 

resigned  submission  to  Him,  whatsoever  He  do  to  us. 
For  this  world,  and  for  the  other !  The  thing  He  sends 
to  us,  were  it  death  and  worse  than  death,  shall  be 
good,  shall  be  best ;  we  resign  ourselves  to  God.  — 
'  If  this  be  Islam,''  says  Goethe,  '  do  we  not  all  live  in 
Islam  f '  Yes,  all  of  us  that  have  any  moral  life  ;  we 
all  live  so.  It  has  ever  been  held  the  highest  wisdom 
for  a  man  not  merely  to  submit  to  Necessity,  —  Neces- 
sity will  make  him  submit,  — but  to  know  and  believe 
well  that  the  stern  thing  which  Necessity  had  ordered 
was  the  wisest,  the  best,  the  thing  wanted  there.  To 
cease  his  frantic  pretension  of  scanning  this  great 
God's-world  in  his  small  fraction  of  a  brain ;  to  know 
that  it  had  verily,  though  deep  beyond  his  soundings,  a 
Just  Law,  that  the  soul  of  it  was  Good  ;- — that  his  part 
in  it  was  to  conform  to  the  Law  of  the  Whole,  and  in 
devout  silence  foUow  that ;  not  questioning  it,  obeying 
it  as  unquestionable. 

I  say,  this  is  yet  the  only  true  morality  known.  A 
man  is  right  and  invincible,  virtuous  and  on  the  road 
towards  sure  conquest,  precisely  while  he  joins  him- 
seK  to  the  great  deep  Law  of  the  World,  in  spite  of 
all  superficial  laws,  temporary  appearances,  profit-aud- 
loss  calculations ;  he  is  victorious  while  he  cooperates 
with  that  great  central  Law,  not  victorious  otherwise  : 
—  and  surely  his  first  chance  of  cooperating  with  it, 
or  getting  into  the  course  of  it,  is  to  know  with  his 
whole  soul  that  it  is  ;  that  it  is  good,  and  alone  good  I 
This  is  the  soul  of  Islam ;  it  is  properly  the  soul 
of  Christianity ;  —  for  Islam  is  definable  as  a  con- 
fused form  of  Christianity ;  had  Christianity  not  been, 
neither  had  it  been.    Christianity  also  commands  us, 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  79 

before  all,  to  be  resigned  to  God.  We  are  to  take  no 
counsel  with  flesh-and-blood  ;  give  ear  to  no  vain  cav- 
ils, vain  sorrows  and  wishes  :  to  know  that  we  know 
nothing  ;  that  the  worst  and  crudest  to  our  eyes  is 
not  what  it  seems  ;  that  we  have  to  receive  whatso- 
ever befalls  us  as  sent  from  God  above,  and  say,  It 
is  good  and  wise,  God  is  great !  "  Though  He  slay  me, 
yet  will  I  trust  in  Him."  Islam  means  in  its  way  De- 
nial of  Self,  Annihilation  of  Self.  This  is  yet  the  high- 
est Wisdom  that  Heaven  has  revealed  to  our  Earth. 

Such  light  had  come,  as  it  could,  to  illuminate  the 
darkness  of  this  wild  Arab  soul.  A  confused  dazzling 
splendour  as  of  life  and  Heaven,  in  the  great  dark- 
ness which  threatened  to  be  death  :  he  called  it  rev- 
elation and  the  angel  Gabriel ;  ^  —  who  of  us  yet  can 
know  what  to  call  it  ?  It  is  the  '  inspiration  of  the 
Almighty  that  giveth  us  understanding.'  To  know ; 
to  get  into  the  truth  of  anything,  is  ever  a  mystic  act, 
—  of  which  the  best  Logics  can  but  babble  on  the 
surface.  '  Is  not  Belief  the  true  god-announcing  Mir- 
acle ?  '  says  Novalls.  —  That  Mahomet's  whole  soul, 
set  in  flame  with  this  grand  Truth  vouchsafed  him, 
should  feel  as  if  it  were  important  and  the  only  im- 
portant thing,  was  very  natural.  That  Providence 
had  unspeakably  honoured  him,  by  revealing  it,  sav- 
ing him  from  death  and  darkness  ;  that  he  therefore 
was  bound  to  make  known  the  same  to  all  creatures : 
this  is  what  was  meant  by  '  Mahomet  is  the  Prophet 
of  God  ; '  this  too  is  not  without  its  true  meaning.  — 

The  good    Kadijah,  we  can  fancy,  listened  to  him 

1  Who  was  said  to  have  brought  the  Koran  to  Mahomet  from 
Heaven. 


4 

80  LECTURES    ON   HEROES 

witli  wouder,  with  doubt :  at  length  she  answered  : 
Yes,  it  was  true  this  that  he  said.  One  can  fancy  too 
the  boundless  gratitude  of  Mahomet ;  and  how  of  all 
the  kindnesses  she  had  done  him,  this  of  believing  the 
3arnest  struggling  word  he  now  spoke  was  the  greatest. 
It  is  certain,'  says  Novalis,  '  my  Conviction  gains  in- 
finitely, the  moment  another  soul  will  believe  in  it.' 
It  is  a  boundless  favour.  —  He  never  forgot  this  good 
Kadijah.  Long  afterwai'ds,  Ayesha  his  young  favour- 
ite wife,  a  woman  who  indeed  distinguished  herself 
among  the  Moslem,  by  all  manner  of  qualities,  through 
her  whole  long  life  ;  this  young  brilliant  Ayesha  was, 
one  day,  questioning  him  :  "  Now  am  not  I  better  than 
Kadijah?  She  was  a  widow ;  old,  and  had  lost  her 
looks  :  you  love  me  better  than  you  did  her  ?  "  — 
"  No,  by  Allah  !  "  answered  Mahomet :  "  No,  by  Al- 
lah !  She  believed  in  me  when  none  else  would  believe. 
In  the  whole  world  I  had  but  one  friend,  and  she  was 
that !  "  —  Seid,  his  Slave,  also  believed  in  him  ;  these 
with  his  young  Cousin  Ali,  Abu  Thaleb's  son,  were  his 
fii'st  converts. 

He  spoke  of  his  Doctrine  to  this  man  and  that ;  but 
the  most  treated  it  with  ridicule,  with  indifference ;  in 
three  years,  I  think,  he  had  gained  but  thirteen  fol- 
lowers. His  progress  was  slow  enough.  His  encour- 
agement to  go  on,  was  altogether  the  usual  encourage- 
ment that  such  a  man  in  such  a  case  meets.  After 
some  three  years  of  small  success,  he  in^^ted  forty  of 
his  chief  kindred  to  an  entertainment ;  and  there  stood- 
up  and  told  them  what  his  pretension  was :  that  he  had 
this  thing  to  promulgate  abroad  to  all  men  ;  that  it  was 
the  highest  thing,  the  one  thing :  which  of  them  would 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  81 

second  him  in  that?  Amid  the  doubt  and  silence  of  all, 
young"  Ali,  as  yet  a  lad  of  sixteen,  impatient  of  the 
silence,  started- up,  and  exclaimed  in  passionate  fierce 
language,  That  he  would !  The  assembly,  among  whom 
was  Abu  Thaleb,  Ali's  Father,  could  not  be  unfriendly 
to  Mahomet ;  yet  the  sight  there,  of  one  unlettered 
elderly  man,  with  a  lad  of  sixteen,  deciding  on  such 
an  enterprise  against  all  mankind,  appeared  ridiculous 
to  them ;  the  assembly  broke-up  in  laughter.  Never- 
theless it  proved  not  a  laughable  thing ;  it  was  a  very 
serious  thing !  As  for  this  young  Ali,  one  cannot  but 
like  him.  A  noble-minded  creature,  as  he  shows  him- 
self, now  and  always  afterwards ;  full  of  affection,  of 
fiery  daring.  Something  chivalrous  in  him  ;  brave  as 
a  lion ;  yet  with  a  grace,  a  truth  and  affection  worthy 
of  Christian  knighthood.  He  died  by  assassination  in 
the  Mosque  at  Bagdad ;  a  death  occasioned  by  his  own 
generous  fairness,  confidence  in  the  fairness  of  others : 
he  said.  If  the  wound  proved  not  unto  death,  they  must 
pardon  the  Assassin  ;  but  if  it  did,  then  they  must  slay 
him  straightway,  that  so  they  two  in  the  same  hour 
might  appear  before  God,  and  see  which  side  of  that 
quarrel  was  the  just  one ! 

Mahomet  naturally  gave  offence  to  the  Koreish, 
Keepers  of  the  Caabah,  superintendents  of  the  Idols. 
One  or  two  men  of  influence  had  joined  him  :  the 
thing  spread  slowly,  but  it  was  spreading.  Naturally 
he  gave  offence  to  everybody:  Who  is  this  that  pre- 
tends to  be  wiser  than  we  all ;  that  rebukes  us  all, 
as  mere  fools  and  worshippers  of  wood !  Abu  Thaleb 
the  good  Uncle  spoke  with  him  :  Could  he  not  be 
silent  about  all  that ;  believe  it  all  for  himself,  and 


82  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

not  trouble  others,  anger  the  chief  men,  endanger  him- 
self and  them  all,  talking  of  it  ?  Mahomet  answered : 
If  the  Sun  stood  on  his  right  hand  and  the  Moon  on 
his  left,  ordering  him  to  hold  his  peace,  he  could  not 
obey !  No :  there  was  something  in  this  Truth  he  had 
got  which  was  of  Nature  herself;  equal  in  rank  to 
Sun,  or  Moon,  or  whatsoever  thing  Nature  had  made. 
It  would  speak  itseK  there,  so  long  as  the  Almighty 
allowed  it,  in  spite  of  Sun  and  Moon,  and  all  Koreish 
and  all  men  and  things.  It  must  do  that,  and  could 
do  no  other.  Mahomet  answered  so ;  and,  they  say, 
'  burst  into  tears.'  Burst  into  tears  :  he  felt  that  Abu 
Thaleb  was  good  to  him ;  that  the  task  he  had  got 
was  no  soft,  but  a  stern  and  great  one. 

He  went  on  speaking  to  who  would  listen  to  him  ; 
publishing  his  Doctrine  among  the  pilgrims  as  they 
came  to  Mecca ;  gaining  adherents  in  this  place  and 
that.  Continual  contradiction,  hatred,  open  or  secret 
danger  attended  him.  His  powei-f  ul  relations  protected 
Mahomet  himself ;  but  by  and  by,  on  his  own  advice, 
aU  his  adherents  had  to  quit  Mecca,  and  seek  refuge 
in  Abyssinia  over  the  sea.^  The  Koreish  grew  ever 
angrier ;  laid  plots,  and  swore  oaths  among  them,  to 
put  Mahomet  to  death  with  their  own  hands.  Abu 
Thaleb  was  dead,  the  good  Kadijah  was  dead.  Ma- 
homet is  not  solicitous  of  sympathy  from  us ;  but  his 
outlook  at  this  time  was  one  of  the  dismalest.  He 
had  to  hide  in  caverns,  escape  in  disguise ;  fly  hither 
and  thither ;  homeless,  in  continual  peril  of  his  life. 
More  than  once  it  seemed  all-over  with  him;  more 
than  once  it  turned  on  a  straw,  some  rider's  horse 
'  Red  Sea. 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  83 

taking  fright  or  the  like,  whether  Mahomet  and  his 
Doctrine  had  not  ended  there,  and  not  been  heard  of 
at  all.     But  it  was  not  to  end  so. 

In  the  thirteenth  year  of  his  mission,  finding  his 
enemies  all  banded  against  him,  forty  sworn  men,  one 
out  of  every  tribe,  waiting  to  take  his  life,  and  no  contin- 
uance possible  at  Mecca  for  him  any  longer,  Mahomet 
fled  to  the  place  then  called  Yathreb,  where  he  had 
gained  some  adherents ;  ^  the  place  they  now  call  Me- 
dina, or  ^M§dinat  al  Nahi,  the  City  of  the  Prophet,' 
from  that  circumstance.  It  lay  some  200  miles  off,^ 
through  rocks  and  deserts  ;  not  without  great  difficulty, 
in  such  mood  as  we  may  fancy,  he  escaped  thither,  and 
found  welcome.  The  whole  East  dates  its  era  from  this 
Flight,  Hegira  as  they  name  it :  the  Year  1  of  this 
Hegira  is  622  of  our  Era,  the  fifty-third  of  Mahomet's 
life.  He  was  now  becoming  an  old  man ;  his  friends 
sinking  round  him  one  by  one ;  his  path  desolate, 
encompassed  with  danger :  unless  he  could  find  hope 
in  his  own  heart,  the  outward  face  of  things  was  but 
hopeless  for  him.  It  is  so  with  aU  men  in  the  like  case. 
Hitherto  Mahomet  had  professed  to  publish  his  Reli- 
gion by  the  way  of  preaching  and  persuasion  alone. 
But  now,  driven  foully  out  of  his  native  country,  since 
unjust  men  had  not  only  given  no  ear  to  his  ear- 
nest Heaven's-message,  the  deep  cry  of  his  heart,  but 
would  not  even  let  him  live  if  he  kept  speaking 
it,  —  the  wild  Son  of  the  Desert  resolved  to  defend 
himself,  like  a  man  and  Arab.    If  the  Koreish  will 

^  In   620   Mahomet   converted    six   pilgrims  from   Yathreb, 
which  city  two  years  later  accepted  him  as  a  true  Prophet. 
^  Toward  the  north. 


84  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

have  it  so,  they  shall  have  it.  Tidings,  felt  to  be  of 
infinite  moment  to  them  and  all  men,  they  would  not 
listen  to  these  ;  would  trample  them  down  by  sheer 
violence,  steel  and  murder  :  well,  let  steel  try  it  then  ! 
Ten  years  more  this  Mahomet  had ;  all  of  fighting,  of 
breathless  impetuous  toil  and  struggle ;  ^  with  what 
result  we  know. 

Much  has  been  said  of  Mahomet's  propagating  his 
Religion  by  the  sword.  It  is  no  doubt  far  nobler  what 
we  have  to  boast  of  the  Christian  Religion,, that  it  pro- 
pagated itself  peaceably  in  the  way  of  preaching  and 
conviction.  Yet  withal,  if  we  take  this  for  an  argu- 
ment of  the  truth  or  falsehood  of  a  religion,  there  is 
a  radical  mistake  in  it.  The  sword  indeed  :  but  where 
will  you  get  your  sword !  Every  new  opinion,  at  its 
starting,  is  precisely  in  a  minority  of  one.  In  one  man's 
head  alone,  there  it  dwells  as  yet.  One  man  alone  of 
the  whole  world  believes  it ;  there  is  one  man  against 
all  men.  That  he  take  a  sword,  and  try  to  propagate 
with  that,  will  do  little  for  him.  You  must  first  get 
your  sword !  On  the  whole,  a  thing  will  propagate 
itself  as  it  can.  We  do  not  find,  of  the  Christian  Re- 
ligion either,  that  it  always  disdained  the  sword,  when 
once  it  had  got  one.  Charlemagne's  conversion  of  the 
Saxons  2  was  not  by  preaching.    I  care  little  about  the 

1  In  629  he  marched  on  Mecca  with  10,000  followers  and  de- 
stroyed the  idols  about  the  Caabah  in  the  ]Mosque.  In  632  he 
made  a  pilgrimage  to  Mecca  at  the  head  of  100,000  converts. 
He  died  soon  after,  in  the  same  j'ear. 

2  Charlemagne  (742-814)  was  at  war  with  the  Saxons  for  over 
thirty  years.  He  was  determined  to  Christianize  them  no  less  than 
to  conquer  them  in  battle.  St.  Lebuin,  impatient  at  his  slow  pro- 
gress in  converting  them,  threatened  them  with  Charlemagne's 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  85 

sword :  I  will  allow  a  thing  to  struggle  for  itself  in 
this  world,  with  any  sword  or  tongue  or  implement  it 
has,  or  can  lay  hold  of.  We  will  let  it  preach,  and 
pamphleteer,  and  fight,  and  to  the  uttermost  bestir  it- 
self, and  do,  beak  and  claws,  whatsoever  is  in  it ;  very 
sure  that  it  will,  in  the  long-run,  conquer  nothing  which 
does  not  deserve  to  be  conquered.  What  is  better  than 
itself,  it  cannot  put  away,  but  only  what  is  worse.  In 
this  great  Duel,  Nature  herself  is  umpire,  and  can  do 
no  wrong :  the  thing  which  is  deepest-rooted  in  Nature, 
what  we  call  truest,  that  thing  and  not  the  other  will 
be  found  growing  at  last. 

Here  however,  in  reference  to  much  that  there  is  in 
Mahomet  and  his  success,  we  are  to  remember  what 
an  umpire  Nature  is ;  what  a  greatness,  composure  of 
depth  and  tolerance  there  is  in  her.  You  take  wheat 
to  cast  into  the  Earth's  bosom :  your  wheat  may  be 
mixed  with  chaff,  chopped  straw,  barn-sweepings,  dust 
and  all  imaginable  rubbish  ;  no  matter :  you  cast  it 
into  the  kind  just  Earth  ;  she  grows  th^  wheat,  —  the 
whole  rubbish  she  silently  absorbs,  shrouds  it  in,  says 
nothing  of  the  rubbish.  The  yellow  wheat  is  growing 
there ;  the  good  Earth  is  silent  about  aU  the  rest,  — 
has  silently  turned  all  the  rest  to  some  benefit  too, 
and  makes  no  complaint  about  it  I  So  everywhere  in 
Nature  !  She  is  true  and  not  a  lie ;  and  yet  so  gi-eat, 
and  just,  and  motherly  in  her  truth.  She  requires  of  a 
thing  only  that  it  he  genuine  of  heart ;  she  will  protect 

sword.  In  retaliation  the  destruction  of  churches  became  the 
accompaniment  of  Saxon  revolt.  Charlemagne  established  gar- 
risons all  over  the  country,  and  (777)  made  Christian  baptism 
compulsory. 


86  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

it  if  so ;  will  not,  if  not  so.  There  is  a  soul  of  truth  in 
all  the  things  she  ever  gave  harbour  to.  Alas,  is  not 
this  the  history  of  all  highest  Truth  that  comes  or  ever 
came  into  the  world  ?  The  body  of  them  all  is  imperfec- 
tion, an  element  of  light  In  darkness :  to  us  they  have 
to  come  embodied  in  mere  Logic,  in  some  merely  scien- 
tific Theorem  of  the  Universe ;  which  cannot  be  com- 
plete ;  which  cannot  but  be  found,  one  day,  incomplete, 
erroneous,  and  so  die  and  disappear.  The  body  of  all 
Truth  dies ;  and  yet  in  all,  I  say,  there  is  a  soul  which 
never  dies ;  which  in  new  and  ever-nobler  embodi- 
ment lives  immortal  as  man  himself !  It  is  the  way 
with  Nature.  The  genuine  essence  of  Truth  never  dies. 
That  it  be  genuine,  a  voice  from  the  great  Deep  of 
Nature,  there  is  the  point  at  Nature's  judgment-seat. 
What  ice  call  pure  or  impure,  is  not  with  her  the  final 
question.  Not  how  much  chaff  is  in  yon  ;  but  whether 
you  have  any  wheat.  Pure  ?  I  might  say  to  many  a 
man :  Yes,  you  are  pure ;  pure  enough ;  but  you  are 
chaff,  —  insincere  hypothesis,  hearsay,  formality  ;  you 
never  were  in  contact  with  the  great  heart  of  the  Uni- 
verse at  all ;  you  are  properly  neither  pure  nor  impure ; 
you  are  nothing.  Nature  has  no  business  with  you. 

Mahomet's  Creed  we  called  a  kind  of  Christianity  ; 
and  really,  if  we  look  at  the  wild  rapt  earnestness  with 
which  it  was  believed  and  laid  to  heart,  I  should  say 
a  better  kind  than  that  of  those  miserable  Syrian  Sects, 
with  their  vain  janglings  about  Homoiousion  and 
Ilomoousio7i,  ^  the  head  full  of  worthless  noise,  the 

*  3/ioios  =  similar, 6jurfs  =  same, -(- <>"<'■'"  =  essence.  These  "vain 
logical  janglings  "  of  the  fourth  century  were  over  the  question  of 
whether  Christ  and  God  wereof  similar  essenceorthesameesseuce. 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  87 

heart  empty  and  dead !  The  truth  of  it  is  embedded 
in  portentous  error  and  falsehood ;  but  the  truth  of  it 
makes  it  be  believed,  not  the  falsehood :  it  succeeded  by 
its  truth.  A  bastard  kind  of  Christianity,  but  a  living 
kind ;  with  a  heart-life  in  it ;  not  dead,  chopping 
barren  logic  merely !  Out  of  all  that  rubbish  of  Arab 
idolatries,  argumentative  theologies,  traditions,  subtle- 
ties, rumours  and  hypotheses  of  Greeks  and  Jews,  with 
their  idle  wiredrawings,  this  wild  man  of  the  Desert, 
with  his  wild  sincere  heart,  earnest  as  death  and  life, 
with  his  great  flashing  natural  eyesight,  had  seen  into 
the  kernel  of  the  matter.  Idolatry  is  nothing :  these 
Wooden  Idols  of  yours, '  ye  rub  them  with  oil  and  wax, 
and  the  flies  stick  on  them,'  —  these  are  wood,  I  tell 
you !  They  can  do  nothing  for  you  ;  they  are  an  im- 
potent blasphemous  pretence ;  a  horror  and  aboinina- 
tion,  if  ye  knew  them.  God  alone  is  ;  God  alone  has 
power ;  He  made  us,  He  can  kill  us  and  keep  us  alive  : 
'  Allah  ahhar,  God  is  great.'  Understand  that  His  will 
is  the  best  for  you ;  that  howsoever  sore  to  flesh-and- 
blood,  you  will  find  it  the  wisest,  best :  you  are  bound 
to  take  it  so ;  in  this  world  and  in  the  next,  you  have 
no  other  thing  that  you  can  do  I 

And  now  if  the  wild  idolatrous  men  did  believe  this, 
and  with  their  fiery  hearts  lay  hold  of  it  to  do  it,  in 
what  form  soever  it  came  to  them,  I  say  it  was  well 
worthy  of  being  believed.  In  one  form  or  the  otlier, 
I  say  it  is  still  the  one  thing  worthy  of  being  believed 
by  all  men.  Man  does  hereby  become  the  high-priest 
of  this  Temple  of  a  World.  He  is  in  harmony  with 
the  Decrees  of  the  Author  of  this  World  ;  cooperat- 
ing with  them,  not  vainly  withstanding  them  :  I  know, 


88  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

to  this  day,  no  better  definition  of  Duty  than  that 
same.  All  that  is  r if/ Jit  includes  itself  in  this  of  co- 
operating with  the  real  Tendency  of  the  World  :  you 
succeed  by  this  (the  World's  Tendency  wiU  succeed), 
you  are  good,  and  in  the  right  course  there.  Homoi- 
ousion.  Homo ousi 011^  vain  logical  jangle,  then  or  be- 
fore or  at  any  time,  may  jangle  itself  out,  and  go 
whither  and  how  it  likes  :  his  is  the  thing  it  all  strug- 
gles to  mean,  if  it  would  mean  anything.  If  it  do  not 
succeed  in  meaning  this,  it  means  nothing.  Not  that 
Abstractions,  logical  Propositions,  be  correctly  worded 
or  incorrectly ;  but  that  living  concrete  Sons  of  Adam 
do  lay  this  to  heart :  that  is  the  important  point. 
Islam  devoured  all  these  vain  jangling  Sects ;  and  I 
think  had  right  to  do  so.  It  was  a  Reality,  direct  from 
the  great  Heart  of  Nature  once  more.  Arab  idolatries, 
Syrian  formulas,  whatsoever  was  not  equally  real,  had 
to  go  up  in  flame,  —  mere  dead  fuel^  in  various  senses, 
for  this  which  was^re. 

It  was  during  these  wild  warfarings  and  strugglings, 
especially  after  the  Flight  to  ^  Mecca,  that  Mahomet 
dictated  at  intervals  his  Sacred  Book,  which  they  name 
Koran  or  Reading^  '  Thing  to  be  read.'  This  is  the 
Work  he  and  his  disciples  made  so  much  of,  asking 
all  the  world,  Is  not  that  a  miracle?  The  Mahom- 
etans resrard  their  Koran  with  a  reverence  which  few 
Christians  pay  even  to  their  Bible.  It  is  admitted 
everywhere  as  the  standard  of  all  law  and  all  practice ; 
the  thing  to  be  gone-upon  in  speculation  and  life :  the 
message  sent  direct  out  of  Heaven,  which  this  Earth 
^  Obviously  a  mere  slip.   See  p.  83. 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  89 

has  to  coDform  to,  and  walk  by  ;  the  thing  to  be  read. 
Their  Judges  decide  by  it ;  all  Moslem  are  bound  to 
study  it,  seek  in  it  for  the  light  of  their  life.  They 
liave  mosques  where  it  is  all  read  daily  ;  thirty  relays 
of  priests  take  it  up  in  succession,  get  through  the 
whole  each  day.  There,  for  twelve-hundred  years,  has 
the  voice  of  this  Book,  at  all  moments,  kept  sounding 
through  the  ears  and  the  hearts  of  so  many  men;  We 
hear  of  Mahometan  Doctors  that  had  read  it  seventy- 
thousand  times ! 

Very  curious :  if  one  souglit  for  '  discrepancies  of 
national  taste,'  here  surely  were  the  most  eminent 
instance  of  that !  We  also  can  read  the  Koran ;  our 
Translation  of  it,  by  Sale,  is  known  to  be  a  very  fair 
one.  I  must  say,  it  is  as  toilsome  reading  as  I  ever 
undertook.  A  wearisome  confused  jvmible,  crude,  in- 
condite ;i  endless  iterations,  loug-windedness,  entangle- 
ment ;  most  crude,  incondite  ;  —  insupjjortable  stupid- 
ity, in  short !  Nothing  but  a  sense  of  duty  could  carry 
any  European  through  the  Koran.  We  read  in  it,  as 
we  might  in  the  State-Paper  Office,  unreadable  masses 
of  lumber,  that  perhaps  we  may  get  some  glimpses  of 
a  remarkable  man.  It  is  true  we  have  it  under  disad- 
vantages :  the  Arabs  see  more  method  in  it  than  we. 
Mahomet's  followers  found  the  Koran  lying  all  in 
fractions,  as  it  had  been  written-down  at  first  jH'omulga- 
tion  ;  much  of  it,  they  say,  on  shoidder-blades  of  mutton,^ 
flung  pellmell  into  a  chest :  and  they  published  it, 
without  any  discoverable  order  as  to  time  or  other- 
wise ;  —  merely  trying,  as  would  seem,  and    this  not 

^  Disordered,  rude. 

2  Also  on  flat  stones,  bits  of  leather,  palm  leaves,  etc. 


90  LECTURES    ON   HEROES 

xery  strictly,  to  put  the  longest  chapters  first.  The 
real  beginning  of  it,  in  that  way,  lies  almost  at  the  end : 
for  the  earliest  portions  were  the  shortest.  Read  in  its 
historical  sequence  it  perhaps  would  not  be  so  bad. 
Much  of  it,  too,  they  say,  is  rhythmic ;  a  kind  of  wild 
chanting  song,  in  the  original.  This  may  be  a  great 
point ;  much  perhajas  has  been  lost  in  the  Translation 
here.  Yet  with  every  allowance,  one  feels  it  difficult  to 
see  how  any  mortal  ever  could  consider  this  Koran  as 
a  Book  written  in  Heaven,  too  good  for  the  Earth ;  as 
a  well-written  book,  or  indeed  as  a  book  at  all ;  and 
not  a  bewildered  rhapsody  ;  ivritten,  so  far  as  writing 
goes,  as  badly  as  almost  any  book  ever  was !  So  much 
for  national  discrepancies,  and  the  standard  of  taste. 

Yet  I  should  say,  it  was  not  unintelligible  how  the 
Arabs  might  so  love  it.  When  once  you  get  this  con- 
fused coil  of  a  Koran  fairly  off  your  hands,  and  have 
it  behind  you  at  a  distance,  the  essential  type  of  it 
begins  to  disclose  itself ;  and  in  this  there  is  a  merit 
quite  other  than  the  literary  one.  If  a  book  come 
from  the  heart,  it  will  contrive  to  reach  other  hearts  ; 
all  art  and  authorcraft  are  of  small  amount  to  that. 
One  would  say  the  primary  character  of  the  Koran  is 
this  of  its  genuineness^  of  its  being  a  hona-Jide  book. 
Prideaux,!  I  know,  and  others  have  represented  it  as 
a  mere  bundle  of  juggleries ;  chapter  after  chapter 
got-up  to  excuse  and  varnish  the  author's  successive 
sins,  forward  his  ambitions  and  quackeries :  but  really 
it  is  time  to  dismiss  all  that.     I  do  not  assert  Ma- 

^  English  clergyman  and  scholar  (1648-1724).  A  most  vigor- 
ous exponent  of  the  "  impostor  hypothesis,"  in  The  True  Nature 
of  Imposture  fully  Displayed  in  the  Life  of  Mahomet  (1697). 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  91 

hornet's  continual  sincerity :  who  is  continually  sin- 
cere ?  But  I  confess  I  can  make  nothing  of  the  critic,  in 
these  times,  who  would  accuse  him  of  deceit  ^^repense  ; 
of  conscious  deceit  generally,  or  perhaps  at  all ;  —  still 
more,  of  living  in  a  mere  element  of  conscious  deceit, 
and  writing  this  Koran  as  a  forger  and  juggler  would 
have  done !  Every  candid  eye,  I  think,  will  read  the 
Koran  far  otherwise  than  so.  It  is  the  confused  fer- 
ment of  a  great  rude  human  soul ;  rude,  untutored, 
that  camiot  even  read  ;  but  fervent,  earnest,  strug- 
gling vehemently  to  utter  itself  in  words.  With  a 
kind  of  breathless  intensity  he  strives  to  utter  him- 
self ;  the  thoughts  crowd  on  him  pellmell :  for  very 
multitude  of  things  to  say,  he  can  get  nothing  said. 
The  meaning  that  is  in  him  shapes  itself  into  no  form 
of  composition,  is  stated  in  no  sequence,  method, 
or  coherence ;  —  they  are  not  shaped  at  all,  these 
thoughts  of  his ;  flung-out  unshaped,  as  they  struggle 
and  tumble  there,  in  their  chaotic  inarticulate  state. 
We  said  '  stupid : '  yet  natural  stupidity  is  by  no 
means  tbe  character  of  Mahomet's  Book  ;  it  is  natural 
uncultivation  rather.  The  man  has  not  studied  speak- 
ing ;  in  the  haste  and  pressure  of  continual  fighting, 
has  not  time  to  mature  himself  into  fit  speech.  The 
panting  breathless  haste  and  vehemence  of  a  man 
strviggling  in  the  thick  of  battle  for  life  and  salvation  ; 
this  is  the  mood  he  is  in !  A  headlong  haste  ;  for  very 
magnitude  of  meaning,  he  cannot  get  himself  articu- 
lated into  words.  The  successive  utterances  of  a  soul 
in  that  mood,  coloured  by  the  various  vicissitudes  of 
three-and-twenty  years  ;  now  well  uttered,  now  worse : 
this  is  the  Koran. 


92  LECTURES    ON   HEROES 

For  we  are  to  consider  Maliomet,  through  these 
three-and-twenty  years,  as  the  centre  of  a  world  wholly 
in  conflict.  Battles  with  the  Koreish  and  Heathen, 
quarrels  among  his  own  people,  backslidings  of  his 
own  wild  heart ;  all  this  kept  him  in  a  perpetual 
whii-1,  his  soul  knowing  rest  no  more.  In  wakeful 
nights,  as  one  may  fancy,  the  wild  soul  of  the  man, 
tossing  amid  these  vortices,  would  hail  any  light  of  a 
decision  for  them  as  a  veritable  light  from  Heaven  ; 
any  making-up  of  his  mind,  so  blessed,  indispensable 
for  him  there,  would  seem  the  inspiration  of  a  Gabriel. 
Forger  and  juggler  ?  No,  no  !  This  great  fiery  heart, 
seething,  simmering  like  a  great  furnace  of  thoughts, 
was  not  a  juggler's.  His  Life  was  a  Fact  to  him ;  this 
God's  Universe  an  awful  Fact  and  Reality.  He  has 
faults  enough;  The  maft  was  an  uncultured  semi-bar- 
barous Son  of  Nature,  much  of  the  Bedouin  still  cling- 
ing to  him :  we  must  take  him  for  that.  But  for  a 
wretched  Simulacrum,  a  hungry  Impostor  without  eyes 
or  heart,  practising  for  a  mess  of  pottage  such  blas- 
phemous swindlery,  forgery  of  celestial  documents, 
continual  high-treason  against  his  Maker  and  Self, 
we  will  not  and  cannot  take  him. 

Sincerity,  in  all  senses,  seems  to  me  the  merit  of 
the  Koran ;  what  had  rendered  it  precious  to  the  wild 
Arab  men.  It  is,  after  all,  the  first  and  last  merit  in 
a  book  ;  gives  rise  to  merits  of  all  kinds,  —  nay,  at 
bottom,  it  alone  can  give  rise  to  merit  of  any  kind. 
Curiously,  through  these  incondite  masses  of  tradi- 
tion, vituperation,  complaint,  ejaculation  in  the  Koran, 
a  vein  of  true  direct  insight,  of  what  we  might  almost  call 
poetry,  is  found  straggling.    The  body  of  the  Book  is 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  93 

made-up  of  mere  tradition,  and  as  it  were  vehement 
enthusiastic  extempore  preaching.  He  returns  forever 
to  the  old  stories  of  the  Prophets  as  they  went  current 
in  the  Arab  memory :  how  Prophet  after  Prophet, 
the  Prophet  Abraham,  the  Prophet  Hud,  the  Prophet 
Moses,  Christian  and  other  real  and  fabulous  Prophets, 
had  come  to  this  Tribe  and  to  that,  warning  men  of 
their  sin ;  and  been  received  by  them  even  as  he 
Mahomet  was,  —  which  is  a  great  solace  to  him.  These 
things  he  repeats  ten,  perhaps  twenty  times ;  again 
and  ever  again,  with  wearisome  iteration ;  has  never 
done  repeating  tliem.  A  brave  Samuel  Johnson,  in 
his  forlorn  garret,  might  con-over  the  Biographies  of 
Authors  in  that  way !  This  is  the  great  staple  of  the 
Koran.  But  curiously,  through  all  this,  comes  ever 
and  anon  some  glance  as  of  the  real  thinker  and  seer. 
He  has  actually  an  eye  for  the  world,  this  Mahomet : 
with  a  certain  directness  and  rugged  vigour,  he  brings 
home  still,  to  our  heart,  the  thing  his  own  heart  has 
been  opened  to.  I  make  but  little  of  his  praises  of 
Allah,  which  many  praise  ;  they  are  borrowed  I  suppose 
mainly  from  the  Hebrew,  at  least  they  are  far  surpassed 
there.  But  the  eye  that  flashes  direct  into  the  heart 
of  things,  and  sees  the  truth  of  them ;  this  is  to  me  a 
highly  interesting  object.  Great  Nature's  own  gift ; 
which  she  bestows  on  all ;  but  which  only  one  in  the 
thousand  does  not  cast  sorrowfully  away  :  it  is  what 
I  call  sincerity  of  vision ;  the  test  of  a  sincere  heart. 

Mahomet  can  work  no  miracles ;  he  often  answers 
impatiently  :  I  can  work  no  miracles.  I ?  'I  am  a 
Public  Preacher ; '  ^   appointed  to  preach  this  doctrine 

*  Mahomet  always  declared  that  it  was  his  sole  divine  com* 
mission  to  preach  the  oneness  of  God. 


94  LECTOHES   ON  HEROES 

to  all  creatures.  Yet  the  world,  as  we  can  see,  had 
really  from  of  old  been  all  one  great  miracle  to  him. 
Look  over  the  world,  says  he  ;  is  it  not  wonderful,  the 
work  of  Allah ;  wholly  '  a  sign  to  you,'  if  your  eyes 
were  open !  This  Earth,  God  made  it  for  you  ;  '  ap- 
pointed paths  in  it ; '  you  can  live  in  it,  go  to  and  fro 
on  it.  —  The  clouds  in  the  dry  country  of  Arabia,  to 
Mahomet  tliey  are  very  wonderful :  Great  clouds,  he 
says,  born  in  the  deep  bosom  of  the  Upi)er  Immensity, 
where  do  they  come  from  !  They  hang  there,^the  great 
black  monsters ;  pour-dowu  their  rain-deluges  '  to  re- 
vive a  dead  earth,'  and  grass  springs,  and  '  tall  leafy 
palm-trees  with  their  date-clusters  hanging  round.  Is 
not  that  a  sign  ? '  Your  cattle  too,  —  Allah  made 
them ;  serviceable  dumb  creatures ;  they  change  the 
grass  into  milk ;  you  have  your  clothing  from  tliem, 
very  strange  creatures ;  they  come  ranking  home  at 
evening-time,  'and,'  adds  he,  'and  are  a  credit  to 
you ! '  Ships  also,  —  he  talks  often  about  ships :  Huge 
moving  mountains,  they  spread-out  their  cloth  wings, 
go  bounding  through  the  water  there,  Heaven's  wind 
driving  them ;  anon  they  lie  motionless,  God  has 
withdrawn  the  wind,  they  lie  dead,  and  cannot  stir ! 
Miracles  ?  ci-ies  he  :  What  miracle  would  you  have  ? 
Are  not  you  yourselves  there  ?  God  made  you, '  shaped 
you  out  of  a  little  clay.'  Ye  were  small  once ;  a  few 
years  ago  ye  were  not  at  all.  Ye  have  beauty,  strength, 
thoughts,  'ye  have  compassion  on  one  another.'  Old 
age  comes-on  you,  and  gray  hairs  ;  your  strength  fades 
into  feebleness ;  ye  sink  down,  and  again  are  not. 
'  Ye  have  compassion  on  one  another  : '  this  struck  me 
much :  Allah  might  have  made  you  having  no  compas- 


I 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  95 

sion  on  one  another,  —  how  had  it  been  then  !  This  is 
a  great  direct  thought,  a  glance  at  first-hand  into  the 
very  fact  of  tilings.  Rude  vestiges  of  poetic  genius, 
of  whatsoever  is  best  and  truest,  are  visible  in  this 
man.  A  strong  untutored  intellect ;  eyesight,  heart : 
a  strong  wild  man,  —  might  have  shaped  himself  into 
Poet,  King,  Priest,  any  kind  of  Hero. 

To  his  eyes  it  is  forever  clear  that  this  world  wholly 
is  miraculous.  He  sees  what,  as  we  said  once  before, 
all  great  thinkers,  the  rude  Scandinavians  themselves, 
in  one  way  or  other,  have  contrived  to  see  :  That  this 
so  solid-looking  material  world  is,  at  bottom,  in  very 
deed.  Nothing ;  is  a  visual  and  tactual  Manifestation 
of  God's  power  and  presence,  —  a  shadow  hung-out 
by  Him,  on  the  bosom  of  the  void  Infinite  ;  nothing 
more.  The  mountains,  he  says,  these  great  rock-moun- 
tains, they  shall  dissipate  themselves  *  like  clouds  ; ' 
melt  into  the  Blue  as  clouds  do,  and  not  be !  He  fig- 
ui'es  the  Earth,  in  the  Arab  fashion,  Sale  tells  us,  as 
an  immense  Plain  or  flat  Plate  of  ground,  the  moun- 
tains are  set  on  that  to  steady  it.  At  the  Last  Day 
they  shall  disappear  '  like  clouds ; '  the  whole  Earth 
shall  go  spinning,  whirl  itself  off  into  wreck,  and  as 
dust  and  vapour  vanish  in  the  Inane.  Allah  with- 
draws his  hand  from  it,  and  it  ceases  to  be.  The  uni- 
versal empire  of  Allah,  presence  everywhere  of  an  un- 
speakable Power,  a  Splendour,  and  a  Terror  not  to  be 
named,  as  the  true  force,  essence  and  reality,  in  all 
things  whatsoever,  was  continually  clear  to  this  man. 
What  a  modern  talks-of  by  the  name.  Forces  of  Na^ 
ture,  Laws  of  Nature  ;  and  does  not  figure  as  a  divine 
thing ;  not  even  as  one  thing  at  all,  but  as  a  set  of 


96  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

things,  undivine  enough,  —  saleable,  curious,  good  for 
jiropelling  steamships  I  With  our  Sciences  and  Cyclo- 
pajdias,  we  are  apt  to  forget  the  divineness^  in  those 
laboratories  of  ours.  We  ought  not  to  forget  it !  That 
once  well  forgotten,  I  know  not  what  else  were  worth 
remembering.  Most  sciences,  I  think,  were  then  a  very 
dead  thing  ;  withered,  contentious,  empty  ;  —  a  thistle 
in  late  autumn.  The  best  science,  without  this,  is  but 
as  the  dead  tiynher ;  it  is  not  the  growing  tree  and 
forest,  —  which  gives  ever-new  timber,  among  other 
things  I  Man  cannot  knoio  either,  unless  he  can  ivo7^- 
shiji  in  some  way.  His  knowledge  is  a  pedantry,  and 
dead  thistle,  other\vise. 

Much  has  been  said  and  written  about  the  sensual- 
ity of  Mahomet's  Religion ;  more  than  was  just.  The 
indulgences,  criminal  to  us,  which  he  permitted,  were 
not  of  his  appointment ;  he  found  them  practised, 
xmquestioned  from  inunemorial  time  in  Arabia  ;  what 
he  did  was  to  curtail  them,  restrict  them,  not  on  one 
but  on  many  sides.  His  Religion  is  not  an  easy  one : 
with  rigorous  fasts,  lavations,^  strict  complex  formulas, 
praj^ers  five  times  a  day,  and  abstinence  from  wine,^ 
it  did  not  '  succeed  by  being  an  easy  religion.'  As  if 
indeed  any  religion,  or  cause  holding  of  religion,  could 
succeed  by  that !  It  is  a  calimmy  on  men  to  say  that 
they  are  roused  to  heroic  action  by  ease,  hope  of  plea- 
sure, recompense,  —  sugar-plums  of  any  kind,  in  this 
world  or  the  next !    In  the  meanest  mortal  there  lies 

1  Purification,  of  both  body  and  clothes,  before  any  religious 
act. 

*  Also  pilgrimages  to  Mecca,  and  the  giving  of  alms  (see  p. 
101). 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  97 

something  nobler.  The  poor  swearing  soldier,  hired  to 
be  shot,  has  his  '  honour  o£  a  soldier,'  different  from 
drill-regulations  and  the  shilling  a  day.  It  is  not  to 
taste  sweet  things,  but  to  do  noble  and  true  things, 
and  vindicate  himself  under  God's  Heaven  as  a  god- 
made  Man,  that  the  poorest  son  of  Adam  dimly  longs. 
Show  him  the  way  of  doing  that,  the  dullest  daydrudge 
kindles  into  a  hero.  They  wrong  man  greatly  who 
say  he  is  to  be  seduced  by  ease.  Difficulty,  abnega- 
tion, martyrdom,  death  are  the  allurements  that  act 
on  the  heart  of  man.  Kindle  the  inner  genial  life 
of  him,  you  have  a  flame  that  burns-up  all  lower 
considei'ations.  Not  happiness,  but  something  higher  : 
one  sees  this  even  in  the  frivolous  classes,  with  their 
'  point  of  honour'  and  the  like.  Not  by  flattering  our 
appetites  ;  no,  by  awakening  the  Heroic  that  slum- 
bers in  every  heart,  can  any  Religion  gain  followers. 

Mahomet  himself,  after  all  that  can  be  said  about 
him,  was  not  a  sensual  man.  We  shall  err  widely  if 
we  consider  this  man  as  a  connnon  voluptuary,  intent 
mainly  on  base  enjoyments, — nay  on  enjoyments  of 
any  kind.  His  household  was  of  the  frugalest ;  his 
common  diet  barley-bread  and  water:  sometimes  for 
months  there  was  not  a  fire  once  lighted  on  his  hearth. 
They  record  with  just  pride  that  he  would  mend  his 
own  shoes,  patch  his  own  cloak.  A  poor,  hard-toiling, 
ill-provided  man  ;  careless  of  what  vulgar  men  toil  for. 
Not  a  bad  man,  I  should  say  ;  something  better  in 
him  than  Jiunger  of  any  sort,  —  or  these  wild  Arab 
men,  fighting  and  jostling  three-and-twenty  years  at 
his  hand,  in  close  contact  with  him  always,  would  not 
have  reverenced  him  so  !   They  were  wild  men,  burst- 


98  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

ing  ever  and  anon  into  quarrel,  into  all  kinds  of  fierce 
sincerity  ;  without  right  worth  and  maiihood,  no  man 
could  have  commanded  them.  They  called  him  Pro- 
phet, you  say?  Why,  he  stood  there  face  to  face  with 
them  ;  bare,  not  enshrined  in  any  mystery ;  visibly 
clouting  his  own  cloak,  cobbling  his  own  shoes;  fight- 
ing, counselling,  ordering  in  the  midst  of  them  :  they 
must  have  seen  what  kind  of  a  man  he  was,  let  him  be 
called  what  you  like  !  No  emperor  with  his  tiaras  was 
obeyed  as  this  man  in  a  cloak  of  his  own  clouting.  Dur- 
ing three-and-twenty  years  of  rough  actual  trial.  I  find 
something  of  a  veritable  Hero  necessary  for  that,  of 
itself. 

His  last  words  are  a  prayer  ;  broken  ejaculations  of 
a  heart  struggling-up,  in  trembling  hope,  towards  its 
Maker.  We  cannot  say  that  his  religion  made  him 
worse ;  it  made  him  better;  good,  not  bad.  Generous 
things  are  recorded  of  him  :  when  he  lost  his  Daugh- 
ter, the  thing  he  answered  is,  in  his  own  dialect,  every- 
way sincere,  and  yet  equivalent  to  that  of  Christians, 
'  The  Lord  giveth,  and  the  Lord  taketh  away  ;  blessed 
be  the  name  of  the  Lord.'  He  answered  in  like  man- 
ner of  Seid,  his  emancipated  well-beloved  Slave,  the 
second  of  the  believers.  Seid  had  fallen  in  the  war  of  Ta- 
buc,i  the  first  of  Mahomet's  fightings  with  the  Greeks. 
Mahomet  said.  It  was  well ;  Seid  had  done  his  Mas- 
ter's work,  Seid  had  now  gone  to  his  Master :  it  was 
all  well  with  Seid.  Yet  Seid's  daughter  found  him 
weeping  over  the  body;  —  the  old  gray-haired  man 
melting  in  tears !  "  What  do  I  see  ? "  said  she.  — 
"  You  see  a  friend  weeping  over  his  friend."  —  He 
^  In  the  year  630.   Tabuc  is  a  valley  in  Arabia. 


I 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  99 

went  out  for  the  last  time  into  the  mosque,  two  days 
before  his  death ;  asked,  If  he  had  injured  any  man  ? 
Let  his  own  back  bear  the  stripes.  If  he  owed  any 
man  ?  A  voice  answered,  "  Yes,  me  three  drachms," 
borrowed  on  such  an  occasion.  Mahomet  ordered  them 
to  be  paid :  "  Better  be  in  shame  now,"  said  he,  "  than 
at  the  Day  of  Judgment."  —  You  remember  Kadijah, 
and  the  "  No,  by  AUah  !  "  Traits  of  that  kind  show 
us  the  genuine  man,  the  brother  of  us  all,  brought 
visible  through  twelve  centuries,  —  the  veritable  Son 
of  our  common  Mother. 

Withal  I  like  Mahomet  for  his-  total  freedom  from 
cant.  He  is  a  rough  self-helping  son  of  the  wilderness  ; 
does  not  pretend  to  be  what  he  is  not.  There  is  no  osten- 
tatious pride  in  him ;  but  neither  does  he  go  much 
upon  humility :  he  is  there  as  he  can  be,  in  cloak  and 
shoes  of  his  own  clouting  ;  speaks  plainly  to  all  man- 
ner of  Persian  Kings,  Greek  Emperors,  what  it  is  they 
are  bound  to  do ;  knows  well  enough,  about  himself, 
'  the  respect  due  unto  thee.'  In  a  life-and-death  war 
with  Bedouins,  cruel  things  could  not  fail ;  but  neither 
are  acts  of  mercy,  of  noble  natural  pity  and  generos- 
ity wanting.  Mahomet  makes  no  apology  for  the  one, 
no  boast  of  the  other.  They  were  each  the  free  dictate 
of  his  heart;  each  called-for,  there  and  then.  Not  a 
mealy-mouthed  man  !  A  candid  ferocity,  if  the  case 
call  for  it,  is  in  him  ;  he  does  not  mince  matters  !  The 
War  of  Tabuc  is  a  thing  he  often  speaks  of :  his  men 
refused,  many  of  them,  to  march  on  that  occasion ; 
pleaded  the  heat  of  the  weather,  the  harvest,  and  so 
forth ;  he  can  never  forget  that.  Your  harvest  ?  It 
lasts  for  a  day.    What  will  become  of  your  harvest 


100  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

through  all  Eternity  ?  Hot  weather  ?  Yes,  it  was  hot ; 
'  but  Hell  will  be  hotter ! '  Sometimes  a  rough  sar- 
casm turns-up  :  He  says  to  the  unbelievers,  Ye  shall 
have  the  just  measure  of  your  deeds  at  that  Great 
Day.  They  wall  be  weighed-out  to  you  ;  ye  shall  not 
have  short  weight !  —  Everywhere  he  fixes  the  matter 
in  his  eye  ;  he  sees  it :  his  heart,  now  and  then,  is  as 
if  struck  dumb  by  the  greatness  of  it.  '  Assuredly,'  he 
says :  that  word,  in  the  Koran,  is  written-down  some- 
times as  a  sentence  by  itself  :   '  Assuredly.' 

No  Dilettantism  in  this  Mahomet ;  it  is  a  busi- 
ness of  Reprobation  and  Salvation  with  him,  of  Time 
and  Eternity :  he*  is  in  deadly  earnest  about  it ! 
Dilettantism,  hypothesis,  speculation,  a  kind  of  ama- 
teur-search for  Truth,  toying  and  coquetting  with 
Truth :  this  is  the  sorest  sin.  The  root  of  all  other 
imaginable  sins.  It  consists  in  the  heart  and  soul  of 
the  man  never  having  been  open  to  Truth  ;  — '  living 
in  a  vain  show.'  Such  a  man  not  only  utters  and  pro- 
duces falsehoods,  but  is  himself  a  falsehood.  The  ra- 
tional moral  principle,  spark  of  the  Divinity,  is  sunk 
deep  in  him,  in  quiet  paralysis  of  life-dedth.  The 
very  falsehoods  of  Mahomet  are  truer  than  the  truths 
of  such  a  man.  He  is  the  insincere  man  :  smooth- 
polished,  respectable  in  some  times  and  places ; 
inoffensive,  says  nothing  harsh  to  anybody ;  most 
cleanly^  —  just  as  carbonic  acid  is,  which  is  death  and 
poison, 

^  As  Carlyle  uses  this  word,  in  the  sense  of  dabbling  frivo- 
lously or  carelessly  with  things  that  ought  to  be  taken  seriously, 
it  is  quite  far  away  from  the  original  sense  of  dilettante,  a 
delighter  in  fine  art,  etc. 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  101 

We  will  not  praise  Mahomet's  moral  precepts  as 
always  of  the  superfinest  sort ;  yet  it  can  be  said  that 
there  is  always  a  tendency  to  good  in  them ;  that  they 
are  the  true  dictates  of  a  heart  aiming  towards  what 
is  just  and  true.  The  sublime  forgiveness  of  Chris- 
tianity, turning  of  the  other  cheek  when  the  one  has 
been  smitten,  is  not  here :  you  are  to  revenge  your- 
self, but  it  is  to  be  in  measure,  not  overmuch,  or 
beyond  justice.  On  the  other  hand,  Islam,  like  any 
great  Faith,  and  insight  into  the  essence  of  man,  is  a 
perfect  equaliser  Af  men :  the  soul  of  one  believer 
outweighs  all  earthly  kingships ;  all  men,  according 
to  Islam  too,  are  equal.  Mahomet  insists  not  on  the 
propriety  of  giving  ahns,  but  on  the  necessity  of  it : 
he  marks-down  by  law  how  much  you  are  to  give,  and 
it  is  at  your  peril  if  you  neglect.  The  tenth  part  of 
a  man's  annual  income,  whatever  that  may  be,  is  the 
jpropcrty  of  the  poor,  of  those  that  are  afflicted  and 
need  help.  Good  all  this :  the  natui'al  voice  of  hu- 
manity, of  pity  and  equity  dwelling  in  the  heart  of 
this  wild  Son  of  Nature  speaks  so. 

Mahomet's  Paradise  is  sensual,  his  Hell  sensual : 
true  ;  in  the  one  and  the  other  there  is  enough  that 
shocks  all  spiritual  feeling  in  us.  But  we  are  to 
recollect  that  the  Ai-abs  already  had  it  so ;  that  Ma- 
homet, in  whatever  he  changed  of  it,  softened  and 
diminished  all  this.  The  worst  sensualities,  too,  are 
the  work  of  doctors,  followers  of  his,  not  his  work. 
In  the  Koran  there  is  really  very  little  said  about  the 
joys  of  Paradise  ;  they  are  intimated  rather  than  in- 
sisted on.  Nor  is  it  forgotten  that  the  highest  joys 
even  there  shall  be  sj)iritual ;  the  pure  Presence  of 


102  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

the  Highest,  this  shall  infinitely  transcend  all  other 
joys.  He  says,  '  Your  salutation  shall  be,  Peace.' 
Salam,  Have  Peace !  —  the  thing  that  all  rational 
souls  long  for,  and  seek,  vainly  here  below,  as  the  one 
blessing.  '  Ye  shall  sit  on  seats,  facing  one  another : 
all  grudges  shall  be  taken  away  out  of  your  hearts.' 
All  grudges !  Ye  shall  love  one  another  freely ;  for 
each  of  you,  in  the  eyes  of  his  brothers,  there  wiU  be 
Heaven  enough ! 

In  reference  to  this  of  the  sensual  Paradise  and 
Mahomet's  sensuality,  the  sorest  chapter  of  all  for  us, 
there  were  many  things  to  be  said ;  which  it  is  not 
convenient  to  enter  upon  here.  Two  remarks  only  I' 
shall  make,  and  therewith  leave  it  to  your  candour. 
The  first  is  furnished  me  by  Goethe ;  it  is  a  casual 
hint  of  his  which  seems  well  worth  taking  note  of.  In 
one  of  his  Delineations,  in  Meisters  Travels  it  is,  the 
hero  comes-upon  a  Society  of  men  with  very  strange 
ways,  one  of  which  was  this :  "  We  require,"  says  the 
Master,  "  that  each  of  our  people  shall  restrict  himself 
in  one  direction,"  shall  go  right  against  his  desire  in 
one  matter,  and  make  himself  do  the  thing  he  does 
not  wish,  "should  we  allow  him  the  greater  latitude  on 
all  other  sides."  There  seems  to  me  a  great  justness 
in  this.  Enjoying  things  which  are  pleasant ;  tliat 
is  not  the  evil :  it  is  the  reducing  of  our  moral  self  to 
slavery  by  them  that  is.  Let  a  man  assert  withal  that 
he  is  king  over  his  habitudes ;  that  he  could  and 
would  shake  them  off,  on  cause  shown  :  this  is  an  excel- 
lent law.  The  Month  Ramadhan  for  the  Moslem, 
much  in  Maliomet's  Religion,  much  in  his  own  Life, 
bears  in  that  direction ;  if  not  by  forethought,  or  clear 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  103 

purpose  of  moral  improvement  on  his  part,  then  by 
a  certain  healthy  manful  instinct,  which  is  as  good. 

But  there  is  another  thing  to  be  said  about  the  Ma- 
hometan Heaven  and  Hell.  This  namely,  that,  however 
gross  and  material  they  may  be,  they  are  an  emblem 
of  an  everlasting  truth,  not  always  so  well  remembered 
elsewhere.  That  gross  sensual  Paradise  of  his ;  that 
horrible  flaming  Hell ;  the  great  enormous  Day  of 
Judgment  he  perpetually  insists  on :  what  is  all  this 
but  a  rude  shadow,  in  the  rude  Bedouin  imagination, 
of  that  grand  sjjiritual  Fact,  and  Beginning  of  Facts, 
which  it  is  ill  for  us  too  if  we  do  not  all  know  and  feel : 
the  Infinite  Nature  of  Duty  ?  That  man's  actions  here  are 
of  infinite  moment  to  him,  and  never  die  or  end  at  all ; 
that  man,  with  his  little  life,  reaches  upwards  high  as 
Heaven,  downwards  low  as  Hell,  and  in  his  threescore 
years  of  Time  holds  an  Eternity  fearfully  and  wonder- 
fully hidden :  all  this  had  burnt  itself,  as  in  flame- 
characters,  into  the  wild  Arab  soul.  As  in  flame  and 
lightning,  it  stands  written  there ;  awful,  unspeakable, 
ever  present  to  him.  With  bursting  earnestness,  with 
a  fierce  savage  sincerity,  half -articulating,  not  able  to 
articulate,  he  strives  to  speak  it,  bodies  it  forth  in  that 
Heaven  and  that  Hell.  Bodied  forth  in  what  way  you 
will,  it  is  the  first  of  all  truths.  It  is  venerable  under  all 
embodiments.  What  is  the  chief  end  of  man  here  below  ? 
Mahomet  has  answered  this  question,  in  a  way  that 
might  put  some  of  us  to  shame !  He  does  not,  like  a 
Bentham,!  a  Paley,^  take  Right  and  Wrong,  and  cal- 

^  Utilitarian  philosopher  (1748-1832). 

2  English  clergyman  (1743-1805),  expounder  of  utilitarian 
morals. 


104  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

culate  the  profit  and  loss,  ultimate  pleasure  of  the  one 
and  of  the  other ;  and  summing  all  up  by  addition  and 
subtraction  into  a  net  result,  ask  you.  Whether  on  the 
whole  the  Kight  does  not  preponderate  considerably? 
No ;  it  is  not  better  to  do  the  one  than  the  other :  the 
one  is  to  the  otlier  as  life  is  to  death,  —  as  Heaven  is  to 
Hell.  The  one  must  in  nowise  be  done,  the  other  in  no- 
wise left  undone.  You  shall  not  measure  them ;  they  are 
incommensurable :  the  one  is  death  eternal  to  a  man, 
the  other  is  life  eternal.  Benthamee  Utility,  virtue  by 
Profit  and  Loss ;  ^  reducing  this  God's-world  to  a  dead 
brute  Steam-engine,  the  infinite  celestial  Soul  of  Man 
to  a  kind  of  Hay-balance  for  weighing  hay  and  thistles 
on,  pleasures  and  pains  on :  —  If  you  ask  me  which 
gives,  Mahomet  or  they,  the  beggarlier  and  falser  view 
of  Man  and  his  Destinies  in  this  Universe,  I  will  an- 
swer. It  is  not  Mahomet ! 

On  the  whole,  we  will  repeat  that  this  Religion  of  Ma- 
homet's is  a  kind  of  Christianity ;  has  a  genuine  ele- 
ment of  what  is  si^irituaUy  highest  looking  through  it, 
riot  to  be  hidden  by  aU  its  imperfections.  The  Scandi- 
navian God  WisJi,  the  god  of  all  rude  men,  —  this  has 
been  enlai-ged  into  a  Heaven  by  Mahomet ;  but  a 
Heaven  symbolical  of  sacred  Duty,  and  to  be  earned 
by  faith  and  welldoing,  by  valiant  action  and  a  divine 
patience  which  is  still  more  valiant.  It  is  Scandinavian 
Paganism,  and  a  truly  celestial  element  superadded  to 
that.    Call  it  not  false  ;  look  not  at  the  falsehood  of  it, 

^  "  Utility  the  test  and  measure  of  virtue,"  "  the  greatest 
happiness  of  the  greatest  number,"  are  phrases  of  Benthamee 
utility.  One  of  Bentham's  books  is  The  Theory  of  Penalties  and 
Rewards  (1811). 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET  105 

look  at  the  truth  of  it.  For  these  twelve  centuries,  it 
has  been  the  religion  and  life-gTiidance  of  the  fifth  part 
of  the  whole  kindred  of  Mankind.  Above  all  things, 
it  has  been  a  religion  heartily  believed.  These  Arabs 
believe  their  religion,  and  try  to  live  by  it !  No  Chris- 
tians, since  the  early  ages,  or  only  perhaps  the  English 
Puritans  in  modern  times,  have  ever  stood  by  their 
Faith  as  the  Moslem  do  by  theirs,  —  believing  it  wholly, 
fronting  Time  with  it,  and  Eternity  with  it.  This  night 
the  watchman  on  the  streets  of  Cairo  when  he  cries, 
"  Who  goes  ? "  will  hear  from  the  passenger,  along 
with  his  answer,  "There  is  no  God  but  God."  Allah 
akhat\  Islam,  sounds  through  the  souls,  and  whole 
daily  existence,  of  these  dusky  millions.  Zealous 
missionaries  preach  it  abroad  among  Malays,  black 
Papuans,  brutal  Idolaters ;  —  displacing  what  is  worse, 
nothino;  that  is  better  or  oood. 

To  the  Arab  Nation  it  was  as  a  birth  from  darkness 
into  light;  Arabia  first  became  alive  by  means  of  it. 
A  poor  shepherd  people,  roaming  unnoticed  in  its  des- 
erts since  the  creation  of  the  world :  a  Hero-Prophet 
was  sent  down  to  them  with  a  word  they  could  believe  : 
see,  the  unnoticed  becomes  world-notable,  the  small 
has  grown  world-great ;  within  one  century  afterwards, 
Arabia  is  at  Grenada  on  this  hand,  at  Delhi  on  that ; 
—  glancing  in  valour  and  splendour  and  the  light  of 
genius,  Arabia  shines  through  long  ages  over  a  great 
section  of  the  world.  Belief  is  jjreat,  life-oivinsr.  The 
history  of  a  Nation  becomes  fruitful,  soul-elevating, 
great,  so  soon  as  it  believes.  These  Arabs,  the  man 
Mahomet,  and  that  one  century,  —  is  it  not  as  if  a  spark 
had  fallen,  one  spark,  on  a  world  of  what  seemed  black 


106  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

unnoticeable  sand ;  but  lo,  the  sand  proves  explosive 
powder,  blazes  heaven-high  from  Dellii  to  Grenada !  I 
said,  the  Great  Man  was  always  as  lightning  out  of 
Heaven  ;  the  rest  of  men  waited  for  him  like  fuel,  and 
then  they  too  would  flame. 


I 


LECTURE  III 

THE  HERO  AS  POET.     DANTE;  SHAKSPEARE 
[Tuesday,  12th  May,  18-40.] 

The  Hero  as  Divinity,  the  Hero  as  Prophet,  are  pro- 
ductions of  old  ages  ;  not  to  be  repeated  in  the  new. 
They  presuppose  a  certain  rudeness  of  conception, 
which  the  progress  of  mere  scientific  knowledge  puts 
an  end  to.  There  needs  to  be,  as  it  were,  a  world 
vacant,  or  almost  vacant  of  scientific  forms,  if  men  in 
their  loving  wonder  are  to  fancy  their  fellow-man  either 
a  god  or  one  speaking  with  the  voice  of  a  god.  Divin- 
ity and  Prophet  are  past.  We  are  now  to  see  our  Hero 
in  the  less  ambitious,  but  also  less  questionable,  char- 
acter of  Poet ;  a  character  which  does  not  pass.  The 
Poet  is  a  heroic  figure  belonging  to  all  ages  ;  whom 
all  ages  possess,  when  once  he  is  produced,  whom  the 
newest  age  as  the  oldest  may  produce ;  —  and  v/ill  pro- 
duce, always  when  Nature  pleases.  Let  Nature  send  a 
Hero-soul ;  in  no  age  is  it  other  than  possible  that  he 
may  be  shaped  into  a  Poet. 

Hero,  Prophet,  Poet,  —  many  different  names,  in 
different  times  and  places,  do  we  give  to  Great  Men ; 
according  to  varieties  we  note  in  them,  according  to 
the  sphere  in  which  they  have  displayed  themselves ! 
We  might  give  many  more  names,  on  this  same  prin- 
ciple.    I  will  remark  again,  however,  as  a  fact  not 


108  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

unimportant  to  be  understood,  that  the  different  sjihere 
constitutes  the  grand  origin  of  such  distinction  ;  that 
the  Hero  can  be  Poet,  Prophet,  King,  Priest  or  what 
you  will,  according  to  the  kind  of  world  he  finds  him- 
self born  into.  I  confess,  I  have  no  notion  of  a  truly 
great  man  that  could  not  be  all  sorts  of  men.  The 
Poet  who  cordd  merely  sit  on  a  chair,  and  compose  stan- 
zas, would  never  make  a  stanza  worth  much.  He  could 
not  sing  the  Heroic  warrior,  unless  he  himself  were  at 
least  a  Heroic  warrior  too.  I  fancy  there  is  in  him  the 
Politician,  the  Tliinker,  Legislator,  Philosopher ;  —  in 
one  or  the  other  degree,  he  could  have  been,  he  is  all 
these.  So  too  I  cannot  understand  how  a  Mirabeau, 
with  that  great  glowing  heart,  with  the  fire  that  was 
in  it,  with  the  bursting  tears  that  were  in  it,  could  not 
have  written  verses,  tragedies,  poems,  and  touched  all 
hearts  in  that  way,  had  his  course  of  life  and  education 
led  him  thitherward.  The  gi-and  fundamental  charac- 
ter is  that  of  Great  Man  ;  that  the  man  be  gi-eat. 
Napoleon  has  words  in  him  which  are  like  Austeilitz 
Battles.^  Louis  Fourteenth's  ^  Marshals  are  a  kind  of 
poetical  men  withal ;  the  things  Turenne  ^  says  are  full. 
of  sagacity  and  geniality,  like  sayings  of  Samuel  John- 
son. The  great  heart,  the  clear  deep-seeing  eye  :  there 
it  lies  ;  no  man  wliatever,  in  what  jirovince  soever,  can 
prosper  at  all  without  these.    Petrarch  and  Boccaccio  * 

1  See  p.  333,  n.  4.  '  See  p.  255,  ii.  1. 

8  1611-1675;  France's  greatest  general  except  Napoleon. 

*  The  chief  initiators  of  the  revival  of  classical  learning  in  the 
fourteenth  centnry.  Boccaccio  (1313-1375),  hest  known  bj'  his 
Decameron,  was  the  author  of  the  earliest  Life  of  Dante.  Pe- 
trarch (or  Petrarca,  1304-1374),  important  as  the  first  of  modern 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  109 

did  diplomatic  messages,  it  seems,  quite  well :  one  can 
easily  believe  it ;  they  had  done  things  a  little  harder 
than  these!  -Burns,  a  gifted  song-writer,  might  have 
made  a  still  better  Mirabeau.  Shakspeare,  —  one 
knows  not  wliat  he  could  not  have  made,  in  the  su- 
preme degree. 

True,  there  are  aptitudes  of  Nature  too.  Nature 
does  not  make  all  great  men,  more  than  allother  men, 
in  the  self-same  mould.  Varieties  of  aptitude  doubtless ; 
but  infinitely  more  of  circumstance ;  and  far  oftenest 
it  is  the  latter  only  that  are  looked  to.  But  It  Is  as 
with  common  men  In  the  learning  of  trades.  You  take 
any  man,  as  yet  a  vague  capability  of  a  man,  who 
could  be  any  kind  of  craftsman  ;  and  make  him  Into  a 
smith,  a  carpenter,  a  mason  :  he  Is  then  and  thence- 
forth that  and  nothing  else.  And  if,  as  Addison  com- 
plains, you  sometimes  see  a  street-porter  staggering 
under  his  load  on  spindle-shanks,  and  near  at  hand  a 
tailor  with  the  frame  of  a  Samson  handling  a  bit  of 
cloth  and  small  Whitechapel  needle,  —  It  cannot  be 
considered  that  aptitude  of  Nature  alone  has  been  con- 
sulted here  either !  —  The  Great  Man  also,  to  what 
shall  he  be  bound  apprentice  ?  Given  your  Hero,  Is 
he  to  become  Conqueror,  King,  Philosopher,  Poet? 
It  Is  an  inexplicably  complex  controversial-calculation 
between  the  world  and  him  !  He  will  read  the  world 
and  Its  laws ;  the  world  with  its  laws  will  be  there  to 
be  read.  What  the  world,  on  this  matter,  shall  per- 
mit and  bid  Is,  as  we  said,  the  most  important  fact 
about  the  world.  — 

classical  scholars,  is  remembered  mainly  for  his  sonnets  addressed 
to  Laura  (cf.  Rom.  and  Jul.,  II,  iv,  41). 


110  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

Poet  and  Prophet  differ  greatly  in  our  loose  modern 
notions  of  them.  In  some  old  languages,  again,  the 
titles  are  synonymous ;  Vates  means  both  Prophet 
and  Poet :  and  indeed  at  all  times,  Prophet  and  Poet, 
well  understood,  have  much  kindred  of  meaning. 
Fundamentally  indeed  they  are  still  the  same ;  in 
this  most  important  respect  especially.  That  they 
have  penetrated  both  of  them  into  the  sacred  mystery 
of  the  Universe  ;  what  Goethe  calls  '  the  open  secret.' 
"Which  is  the  great  secret?"  asks  one.  —  "The  oj^en 
secret,"  —  open  to  all,  seen  by  almost  none!  That 
divine  mystery,  which  lies  everywhere  in  all  Beings, 
'  the  Divine  Idea  of  the  World,  that  which  lies  at  the 
bottom  of  Appearance,'  as  Fichte  ^  styles  it ;  of  which 
all  Appearance,  from  the  starry  sky  to  the  grass  of 
the  field,  but  especially  the  Appearance  of  Man  and 
his  work,  is  but  the  vesture,  the  embodiment  that 
renders  it  visible.  This  divine  mystery  is  in  all  times 
and  in  all  places ;  veritably  is.  In  most  times  and 
places  it  is  greatly  overlooked  ;  and  the  Universe, 
definable  always  in  one  or  the  other  dialect,  as  the 
realised  Thought  of  God,  is  considered  a  trivial,  inert, 
commonplace  matter,  —  as  if,  says  the  Satirist,^  it 
were  a  dead  thing,  which  some  upholsterer  had  put 
together !  It  could  do  no  good,  at  present,  to  speak 
much  about  this  ;  but  it  is  a  pity  for  every  one  of  us 
if  we  do  not  know  it,  live  ever  in  the  knowledge  of  it. 

1  See  p.  217,  218. 

•^  Carlyle,  as  here,  has  a  trick,  sometimes  perplexing  to  the 
beginner,  of  introducing  his  own  opinions  and  sayings  as  if 
quoted  from  other  (fictitious)  persons, — most  notable  among 
whom  is  Professor  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh,  whose  "  Life  and 
Opinions  "  constitute  the  subject  matter  of  Sartor  Resartus. 


I 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  111 

Really  a  most  mournful  pity ;  —  a  failure  to  live  at  all, 
if  we  live  otherwise ! 

But  now,  I  say,  whoever  may  forget  this  divine 
mystery,  the  Vates,  whether  Prophet  or  Poet,  has  pene- 
trated into  it ;  is  a  man  sent  hither  to  make  it  more 
impressively  known  to  us.  That  always  is  his  message  ; 
he  is  to  reveal  that  to  us,  —  that  sacred  mystery  which 
he  more  than  others  lives  ever  present  with.  While 
others  forget  it,  he  knows  it ;  —  I  might  say,  he  has 
been  driven  to  know  it ;  without  consent  asked  of  hbn, 
he  finds  himself  living  in  it,  bound  to  live  in  it.  Once 
more,  here  is  no  Hearsay,  but  a  direct  Insight  and 
Belief ;  this  man  too  could  not  help  being  a  sincere 
man !  Whosoever  may  live  in  the  shows  of  things,  it 
is  for  him  a  necessity  of  nature  to  live  in  the  very 
fact  of  things.  A  man  once  more,  in  earnest  with  the 
Universe,  though  aU  others  were  but  toying  with  it. 
He  is  a  Vates,  first  of  all,  in  virtue  of  being  sincere. 
So  far  Poet  and  Prophet,  participators  in  the  '  open 
secret,'  are  one. 

With  respect  to  their  distinction  again :  The  Vates 
Prophet,  we  might  say,  has  seized  that  sacred  mystery 
rather  on  the  moral  side,  as  Good  and  Evil,  Duty  and 
Prohibition  ;  the  Vates  Poet  on  what  the  Germans 
call  the  festhetic  side,  as  Beautiful,  and  the  like.  The 
one  we  may  call  a  revealer  of  what  we  are  to  do,  the 
other  of  what  we  are  to  love.  But  indeed  these  two 
provinces  run  into  one  another,  and  cannot  be  dis- 
joined. The  Prophet  too  has  his  eye  on  what  we  are 
to  love :  how  else  shall  he  know  what  it  is  we  are  to 
do  ?  The  highest  Voice  ever  heard  on  this  earth  said, 
withal,  "  Consider  the  lilies  of  the  field ;  they  toil  not, 


112  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

neither  do  they  spin  :  yet  Solomon  in  all  his  glory  was 
not  arrayed  like  one  of  these."  ^  A  glance,  that,  into 
the  deepest  deep  of  Beauty.  '  The  lilies  of  the  field,' 
—  dressed  finer  than  earthly  princes,  sjaringing-np 
there  in  the  humble  furrow-field ;  a  beautiful  eye 
looking-out  on  you,  from  the  great  inner  Sea  of 
Beauty  I  How  could  the  rude  Earth  make  these  if 
her  Essence,  rugged  as  she  looks  and  is,  were  not  in- 
wardly Beauty?  In  this  point  of  view,  too,  a  saying 
of  Goethe's,  which  has  staggered  several,  may  have 
meaning:  'The  Beautiful,'  he  intimates,  'is  higher 
than  the  Good  ;  the  Beautiful  includes  in  it  the  Good.' 
The  tme  Beautifid  ;  which  however,  I  have  said  some- 
where, '  differs  from  the  false  as  Heaven  does  from 
Vauxhall ! '  ^  So  much  for  the  distinction  and  identity 
of  Poet  and  Prophet. — 

In  ancient  and  also  in  modern  periods  we  find  a 
few  Poets  who  are  accounted  perfect ;  whom  it  were 
a  kind  of  treason  to  find  fault  with.  This  is  note- 
worthy ;  this  is  right :  yet  in  strictness  it  is  only  an 
illusion.  At  bottom,  clearly  enough,  there  is  no  perfect 
Poet !  A  vein  of  Poetry  exists  in  the  hearts  of  all  men  ; 
no  man  is  made  altogether  of  Poetry.  We  are  all  poets 
when  we  read  a  poem  well.  The  '  imagination  that 
shudders  at  the  Hell  of  Dante,'  is  not  that  the  same 
faculty,  weaker  in  degree,  as  Dante's  own  ?  No  one 
but  Shakspeare  can  embody,  out  of  Saxo  Grammati- 

1  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  Matt,  vi,  28-29. 

^  A  famous  place  of  amusement  in  London,  on  the  Thames, 
above  Westminster,  1G61-1859.  The  Spectator,  Xo.  383,  "Sir 
Roger  at  Vauxhall,"  and  Vanity  Fair,  vol.  i,  ch.  vi,  give  glimpses 
of  the  amusements  there. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  113 

CMS,  the  story  of  Hamlet  as  Shakspeare  did :  but 
every  one  models  some  kind  of  story  out  of  it ;  every 
one  embodies  it  better  or  worse.  We  need  not  spend 
time  in  defining*.  Where  there  is  no  specific  difference, 
as  between  round  and  square,  all  definition  must  be 
more  or  less  arbitrary.  A  man  that  has  so  much  more 
of  the  poetic  element  developed  in  him  as  to  have  be- 
come noticeable,  will  be  called  Poet  by  his  neighbours. 
World-Poets  too,  those  whom  we  are  to  take  for  per- 
fect Poets,  are  settled  by  critics  in  the  same  way. 
One  who  rises  so  far  above  the  general  level  of  Poets 
will,  to  such  and  such  critics,  seem  a  Universal  Poet ; 
as  he  ought  to  do.  ,  And  yet  it  is,  and  must  be,  an 
arbitrary  distinction.  All  Poets,  all  men,  have  some 
touches  of  the  Universal ;  no  man  is  wholly  made  of 
that.  Most  Poets  are  very  soon  forgotten  :  but  not  the 
noblest  Shakspeare  or  Homer  of  them  can  be  remem- 
bered forever  ;  —  a  day  comes  when  he  too  is  not ! 

Nevertheless,  you  wiU  say,  there  must  be  a  differ- 
ence between  true  Poetry  and  true  speech  not  poetical : 
what  is  the  difference  ?  On  this  point  many  things 
have  been  written,  especially  by  late  German  Critics, 
some  of  which  are  not  very  intelligible  at  first.  They 
say,  for  example,  that  the  Poet  has  an  infinitude  in 
him ;  communicates  an  UnendlicKkeit^  a  certain  charac- 
ter of  '  infinitude,'  to  whatsoever  he  delineates.  This, 
though  not  very  precise,  yet  on  so  vague  a  matter  is 
worth  remembering :  if  weU  meditated,  some  meaning 
will  gradually  be  found  in  it.  For  my  own  part,  I  find 
considerable  meaning  in  the  old  vulgar  distinction  of 
Poetry  being  metrical^  ha\dng  music  in  it,  being  a  Song. 
Truly,  if  pressed  to  give  a  definition,  one  might  say 


114  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

this  as  soon  as  anything  else :  If  your  dehneation  be 
authentically  musical,  musical  not  in  word  only,  but 
in  heart  and  substance,  in  all  the  thoughts  and  utter- 
ances of  it,  in  the  whole  conception  of  it,  then  it  will 
be  poetical ;  if  not,  not.  —  Musical :  how  much  lies  in 
that !  A  musical  thought  is  one  spoken  by  a  mind 
that  has  penetrated  into  the  inmost  heart  of  the  thing  ; 
detected  the  inmost  mystery  of  it,  namely  the  melody 
that  lies  hidden  in  it ;  the  inward  harmony  of  coher- 
ence which  is  its  soul,  whereby  it  exists,  and  has  a 
right  to  be,  here  in  this  world.  All  inmost  things,  we 
may  say,  are  melodious  ;  naturally  utter  themselves 
in  Song.  The  meaning  of  Song  goes  deep.  Who  is 
there  that,  in  logical  words,  can  express  the  effect  mu- 
sic has  on  us?  A  kind  of  inarticidate  unfathomable 
speech,  which  leads  us  to  the  edge  of  the  Infinite,  and 
lets  us  for  moments  gaze  into  that ! 

Nay  all  speech,  .even  the  commonest  speech,  has 
something  of  song  in  it :  not  a  parish  in  the  world  but 
has  its  parish-accent ;  —  the  rhythm  or  tune  to  which 
the  people  there  sing  what  they  have  to  say !  Accent 
is  a  kind  of  chanting ;  all  men  have  accent  of  their 
own,  —  though  they  only  notice  that  of  others.  Ob- 
serve too  how  all  passionate  language  does  of  itself 
become  musical,  —  with  a  finer  music  than  the  mere 
accent ;  the  speech  of  a  man  even  in  zealous  anger  be- 
comes a  chant,  a  song.  All  deep  things  are  Song.  It 
seems  somehow  the  very  central  essence  of  us.  Song  ; 
as  if  all  the  rest  were  but  wrappages  and  hulls !  The 
primal  element  of  us ;  of  us,  and  of  all  things.  The 
Greeks  fabled  of  Sphere-Harmonies:  it  was  the  feel- 
ing they  had  of  the  inner  structure  of  Nature :  that  the 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  115 

soul  o£  all  her  voices  and  utterances  was  perfect  music. 
Poetry,  therefore,  we  will  call  musical  Thought.  The 
Poet  is  he  who  thinks  in  that  manner.  At  bottom,  it 
turns  still  on  power  of  intellect ;  it  is  a  man's  sin- 
cerity and  depth  of  vision  that  makes  him  a  Poet. 
See  deep  enough,  and  you  see  musically ;  the  heart 
of  Nature  being  everywhere  music,  if  you  can  only 
reach  it. 

The  Vates  Poet,  with  his  melodious  Apocalypse  of 
Nature,  seems  to  hold  a  poor  rank  among  us,  in  com- 
parison with  the  Vates  Prophet ;  his  function,  and  our 
esteem  of  him  for  his  function,  alike  slight.  The  Hero 
taken  as  Divinity  ;  the  Hero  taken  as  Prophet ;  then 
next  the  Hero  taken  only  as  Poet :  does  it  not  look  as 
if  our  estimate  of  the  Great  Man,  epoch  after  epoch, 
were  continually  diminishing?  We  take  him  first  for 
a  god,  then  for  one  god-inspired  ;  and  now  in  the  next 
stage  of  it,  his  most  miraculous  word  gains  from  us 
only  the  recognition  that  he  is  a  Poet,  beautiful  verse- 
maker,  man  of  genius,  or  suchlike  !  —  It  looks  so  ;  but 
I  persuade  myself  that  intrinsically  it  is  not  so.  If  we 
consider  well,  it  will  perhaps  appear  that  in  man  still 
there  is  the  same  altogether  peculiar  admiration  for 
the  Heroic  Gift,  by  what  name  soever  called,  that  there 
at  any  time  was. 

I  should  say,  if  we  do  not  now  reckon  a  Great  Man 
literally  divine,  it  is  that  our  notions  of  God,  of  the 
supreme  unattainable  Fountain  of  Splendour,  Wisdom, 
and  Heroism,  are  ever  rising  higher ;  not  altogether 
that  our  reverence  for  these  qualities,  as  manifested  in 
our  like,  is  getting  lower.  This  is  worth  taking  thought 
of.    Sceptical  Dilettantism,  the  curse  of  these  ages,  a 


116  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

curse  wliicli  will  not  last  forever,  does  indeed  in  this 
the  highest  province  of  human  things,  as  in  all  pro- 
vinces, make  sad  work ;  and  our  reverence  for  great 
men,  all  crippled,  Winded,  paralytic  as  it  is,  comes-out 
in  poor  plight,  hardly  recognisable.  Men  worship  tli(^ 
shows  of  great  men  ;  the  most  disbelieve  that  there  is 
any  reality  of  great  men  to  worship.  The  dreariest,  fa- 
talest  faith ;  believing  which,  one  woidd  literally  desjjair  - 
of  human  things.  Nevertheless  look,  for  example,  at 
Napoleon  !  A  Corsican  lieutenant  of  artillery  ;  that  is 
the  show  of  7ii7n :  yet  is  he  not  obeyed,  v:>orshij)2>ed  after 
his  sort,  as  all  the  Tiaraed  and  Diademed  of  the  world 
put  together  could  not  be  ?  High  Duchesses,  and  ostlers 
of  inns,  gather  round  the  Scottish  rustic.  Burns ;  —  a 
strange  feeling  dwelling  in  each  that  they  never  heard 
a  man  like  this ;  that,  on  the  whole,  this  is  the  man ! 
In  the  secret  heart  of  these  people  it  still  diml}'  reveals 
itself,  though  there  is  no  accredited  way  of  uttering  it 
at  present,  that  this  rustic,  with  his  black  brows  and 
flashing  sun-eyes,  and  strange  words  mo"vang  laughter 
and  tears,  is  of  a  dignity  far  beyond  all  others,  incom- 
mensurable with  all  others.  Do  not  we  feel  it  so  ?  But 
now,  were  Dilettantism,  Scepticism,  Triviality,  and  all 
that  sorrowful  brood,  cast-out  of  us,  —  as,  by  God's 
blessing,  they  shall  one  day  be  ;  were  faith  in  the  shows 
of  things  entirely  swept-out,  replaced  by  clear  faith  in 
the  things^  so  that  a  man  acted  on  the  impulse  of  that 
only,  and  counted  the  other  non-extant ;  what  a  new 
livelier  feeling  towards  this  Burns  were  it ! 

Nay  here  in  these  ages,  such  as  they  are,  have  we 
not  two  mere  Poets,  if  not  deified,  yet  we  may  say 
beatified  ?  Shakspeare  and  Dante  are  Saints  of  Poetry ; 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  111 

really,  if  we  will  think  of  it,  canonised,  so  that  it  is 
impiety  to  meddle  with  them.  The  unguided  instinct 
of  the  world,  working  across  all  these  perverse  impedi- 
ments, has  arrived  at  such  result.  Dante  and  Shak- 
speare  are  a  peculiar  Two,  They  dwell  apart,  in  a 
kind  of  royal  solitude ;  none  equal,  none  second  to 
them :  in  the  general  feeling  of  the  world,  a  certain 
transcendentalism,  a  glory  as  of  complete  perfection, 
invests  these  two.  They  are  canonised,  though  no  Pope 
or  Cardinals  took  hand  in  doing  it  I  Such,  in  spite  of 
every  perverting  influence,  in  the  most  unheroic  times, 
is  still  our  indestructible  reverence  for  heroism.  —  We 
will  look  a  little  at  these  Two,  the  Poet  Dante  and  the 
Poet  Shakspeare :  what  little  it  is  permitted  us  to  say 
here  of  the  Hero  as  Poet  will  most  fitly  arrange  itself 
in  that  fashion. 

Many  volumes  have  been  written  by  way  of  commen- 
tary on  Dante  and  his  Book  ;  yet,  on  the  whole,  with 
no  great  result.  His  Biography  is,  as  it  were,  irrecov- 
erably lost  for  us.  An  unimportant,  wandering,  sorrow- 
stricken  man,  not  much  note  was  taken  of  him  while  he 
lived ;  and  the  most  of  that  has  vanished,  in  the  long 
space  that  now  intervenes.  It  is  five  centuries  since  he 
ceased  writing  and  living  here.  After  all  commentaries, 
the  Book  itself  is  mainly  what  we  know  of  him.  The 
Book  ;  —  and  one  might  add  that  Portrait  commonly 
attributed  to  Giotto,  ^  which,  looking  on  it,  you  cannot 

1  Tlie  most  famous  artist  of  his  time  (1276-1337),  friend  of 
Dante.    Wliat  portrait  Carlyle  had  in  mind  here  it  is  impossible 
(>;      to  say  with  certainty.    The  only  portrait  now  "commonly  at- 
tributed to  Giotto,"  was  at  that  time  unknown.    See  add.  note. 


118  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

help  inclining  to  think  genuine,  whoever  did  it.  To 
me  it  is  a  most  touching  face ;  perhaps  of  all  faces 
that  I  know,  the  most  so.  Lonely  there,  painted  as  on 
vacancy,  with  the  simple  laurel  wound  round  it ;  the 
deatliless  sorrow  and  pain,  the  known  victory  which 
is  also  deathless  ;  —  significant  of  the  whole  history  of 
Dante  I  I  think  it  is  the  mournfulest  face  that  ever 
was  painted  from  reality  ;  an  altogether  tragic,  heart- 
affecting  face.  There  is  in  it,  as  a  foundation  of  it, 
the  softness,  tenderness,  gentle  affection  as  of  a  child  ; 
but  all  this  is  as  if  congealed  into  sharp  contradiction, 
into  abnegation,  isolation,  proud  hopeless  pain.  A  soft 
ethereal  soul  looking-out  so  stern,  implacable,  grim- 
trenchant,  as  from  imprisonment  of  thick-ribbed  ice ! 
Withal  it  is  a  silent  pain  too,  a  silent  scornful  one : 
the  lip  is  curled  in  a  kind  of  godlike  disdain  of  the 
thing  that  is  eating-out  his  heart,  —  as  if  it  were 
withal  a  mean  insignificant  thing,  as  if  he  whom  it  had 
power  to  torture  and  strangle  were  greater  than  it. 
The  face  of  one  wholly  in  protest,  and  life-long  unsur- 
rendering  battle,  against  the  world.  Affection  all 
converted  into  indignation  :  an  implacable  indignation  ; 
slow,  equable,  silent,  like  that  of  a  god !  The  eye  too, 
it  looks-out  as  in  a  kind  of  surprise,  a  kind  of  inquiry. 
Why  the  world  was  of  such  a  sort  ?  This  is  Dante  : 
so  he  looks,  this  '  voice  of  ten  silent  centuries,'  and 
sings  us  '  his  mystic  unfathomable  song.' 

The  little  that  we  know  of  Dante's  ^  Life  corresponds 
well  enough  with  this  Portrait  and  this  Book.  He  was 
born  at  Florence,  in  the  upper  class  of  society,  in  the 

^  His  full  name  was  Durante  Alighieri,  called  Dante  "for 
short." 


DANTE  ALI6HIERI 

The  Bargello  Portrait 


Drawn  by  Mr.  Seymour  Kirkup  before  it  was  retouched  by  Manni. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  119 

year  1265.  His  education  was  the  best  then  going ; 
much  school-divinity,  Aristotelean  logic,  some  Latin 
classics,  —  no  inconsiderable  insight  into  certain  pro- 
vinces of  things  :  and  Dante,  with  his  earnest  intelligent 
nature,  we  need  not  doubt,  learned  better  than  most 
all  that  was  learnable.  He  has  a  clear  cultivated 
understanding,  and  of  great  subtlety ;  this  best  fruit 
of  education  he  had  contrived  to  realise  fi'om  these 
scholastics.  He  knows  accurately  and  well  what  lies 
close  to  him ;  but,  in  such  a  time,  without  printed 
books  or  free  intercourse,  he  could  not  know  well  what 
was  distant :  the  small  clear  light,  most  luminous  for 
what  is  near,  breaks  itself  into  singular  chiaroscuro 
striking  on  what  is  far  off.  This  was  Dante's  learning 
from  the  schools.  In  life,  he  had  gone  through  the 
usual  destinies  ;  been  twice  out  campaigning  as  a 
soldier  for  the  Florentine  State,  been  on  embassy ; 
had  in  his  thirty-fifth  year,  by  natural  gradation  of 
talent  and  service,  become  one  of  the  Chief  Magistrates 
of  Florence.  He  had  met  in  boyhood  a  certain  Beatrice 
Portinari,^  a  beautiful  little  girl  of  his  own  age  and 
rank,  and  grown-up  thenceforth  in  partial  sight  of  her, 
in  some  distant  intercourse  with  her.  All  readers 
know  his  graceful  affecting  account  of  this ;  and 
then  of  their  being  parted ;   of  her  being  wedded  to 

^  The  tradition  that  Beatrice  was  of  the  Portinari  family  dates 
from  Boccaccio's  Life  of  Dante.  Modern  scholarship  is  inclined 
to  doubt  the  authority  of  that  statement,  and  accordingly  of 
other  statements  frequently  made  about  her,  and  even  in  fact 
whether  "  Beatrice  "  was  her  real  name  or  a  poetical  invention 
of  Dante.  The  story,  "graceful,  affecting"  beyond  almost  all 
else  in  literature,  is  beautifully  told  in  La  Vita  Nuova  (The 
New  Life),  Dante's  first  book. 


120  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

another,  and  of  her  death  soon  after.  She  makes  a 
great  figure  in  Dante's  Poem ;  seems  to  have  made 
a  great  figure  hi  his  life.  Of  all  beings  it  might  seem 
as  if  she,  held  apart  from  him,  far  apart  at  last  in  the 
dim  Eternity,  were  the  only  one  he  had  ever  with  his 
whole  strength  of  affection  loved.  She  died :  Dante 
himself  was  wedded  ;  but  it  seems  not  happily,  far 
from  happily.^  I  fancy,  the  rigorous  earnest  man,  with 
his  keen  excitabilities,  was  not  altogether  easy  to  make 
happy. 

We  will  not  complain  of  Dante's  miseries :  had  all 
gone  right  with  him  as  he  wished  it,  he  might  have 
been  Prior,^  Podesta,  or  whatsoever  they  call  it,  of 
Florence,  weU  accepted  among  neighbours,  —  and  the 
world  had  wanted  one  of  the  most  notable  words  ever 
spoken  or  sung.  Florence  would  have  had  another 
prosperous  Lord  Mayor ;  and  the  ten  dumb  centuries 
continued  voiceless,  and  the  ten  other  listening  centu- 
ries (for  there  will  be  ten  of  them  and  more)  had  no 
Divina  Commedia  to  hear !  We  will  complain  of 
nothing.  A  nobler  destiny  was  appointed  for  this 
Dante ;  and  he,  struggling  like  a  man  led  towards 
death  and  crucifixion,  could  not  help  fulfilling  it. 
Give  him  the  choice  of  his  happiness  !  He  knew  not, 
more  than  we  do,  what  was  really  happy,  what  was 
really  miserable. 

^' Not  altogether  proven.  The  only  evidence  is  the  statement 
of  the  gossiping  Boccaccio,  and  the  facts  that  no  mention  of  his 
wife  occurs  in  Dante's  works,  and  that  she  did  not  accompany 
hira  into  exile. 

2  He  was  Prior  for  one  term  (two  months)  in  1300,  but  not 
Podestk,  a  higher  rank  in  the  Florentine  municipal  govern- 
ment.   See  next  paragraph. 


THE  HERQ  AS  POET  121 

In  Dante's  Priorsliij),  the  Guelf-Ghibelline,  Biauclii- 
Neri,^  or  some  other  confused  disturbances  rose  to 
such  a  height,  that  Dante,  whose  party  had  seemed  the 
stronger,  was  with  his  friends  cast  unexpectedly  forth 
into  banishment ;  doomed  thenceforth  to  a  life  of  woe 
and  wandering-.  His  property  was  all  confiscated  and 
more ;  he  had  the  fiercest  feeling  that  it  was  entirely 
unjust,  nefarious  in  the  sight  of  God  and  man.  He 
tried  what  was  in  him  to  get  reinstated ;  tried  even  by 
warlike  surprisql,  with  arms  in  his  hand :  but  it  would 
not  do  ;  bad  only  had  become  worse.  There  is  a  record,^ 
I  believe,  still  extant  in  the  Florence  Archives,  doom- 
ing this  Dante,  wheresoever  caught,  to  be  burnt  alive. 
Burnt  alive  ;  so  it  stands,  they  say :  a  very  curious 
civic  document.  Another  curious  document,  some  con- 
siderable number  of  years  later,  is  a  Letter  of  Dante's 
to  the  Florentine  Magistrates,  written  in  answer  to 
a  milder  proposal  of  theii's,  that  he  shoidd  return 
on  condition  of  apologising  and  paying  a  fine.  He 
answers,  with  fixed  stern  pride :  "  If  I  cannot  return 
without  calling  myself  guilty,  I  will  never  return, 
nunquam  revertary  ^ 

^  The  Guelphs  and  Gliibelllnes  (the  words  derived  from  two 
German  family  names)  in  medieval  history  were  the  parties 
respectively  of  the  Pope  and  the  people,  and  the  Emperor  and 
the  aristocracy.  The  Guelph  party  in  Florence,  being  in  the 
ascendency,  became  subdivided  into  Bianchi  (Whites),  the  mod- 
erate party,  and  Neri  (Blacks),  the  violent.  The  Pope's  inter- 
ference on  behalf  of  the  Blacks  resulted  in  the  banishment  from 
Florence  of  tlie  Whites,  among  whom  was  Dante  (1302). 

*  Dated  March  10,  1302,  forty  days  after  the  sentence  of 
Dante  and  his  fellow  Priors  to  pay  fines,  upon  conviction  of 
various  crimes. 

^  Some  doubt  has  been  thrown  on  the  authenticity  of  this  letter. 


122  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

For  Dante  there  was  now  no  home  in  this  world. 
He  wandei-ecl  from  patron  to  patron,  from  place  to 
place  ;  proving,  in  his  own  bitter  words,  '  How  hard 
is  the  path,  Come  e  duro  calle.^  ^  The  wretched  are 
not  cheerful  company.  Dante,  poor  and  banished,  with 
his  jiroud  earnest  nature,  with  his  moody  humours, 
was  not  a  man  to  conciliate  men.  Petrarch  reports  of 
him  that  being  at  Can  della  Scala's  court,  and  blamed 
one  day  for  his  gloom  and  taciturnity,  he  answered  in 
no  courtier-like  way.  Delia  Scala  ^  stood  among  his 
courtiers,  with  mimes  and  buffoons  (iiehidones  ac  his- 
triones)  making  him  heartily  merry ;  when  turning  to 
Dante,  he  said  :  "  Is  it  not  strange,  now,  that  this  poor 
fool  should  make  himself  so  entertaining  ;  while  you  a 
wise  man  sit  there  day  after  day,  and  have  nothing  to 
amuse  us  with  at  all?  "  Dante  answered  bitterly  :  "  No, 
not  strange  ;  your  Highness  is  to  recollect  the  Proverb, 
Like  to  Lihe  ;  " —  given  the  amuser,  the  amusee  must 
also  be  given  !  Such  a  man,  with  his  proud  silent  ways, 
with  his  sarcasms  and  sorrows,  was  not  made  to  suc- 
ceed at  court.  By  degrees,  it  came  to  be  evident  to  him 
that  he  had  no  longer  any  resting-place,  or  hope  of 
benefit,  in  this  earth.  The  earthly  world  had  cast  him 
forth,  to  wander,  wander  ;  no  living  heart  to  love  him 
now ;  for  his  sore  miseries  there  was  no  solace  here. 

^  Thou  shalt  have  proof  how  savoreth  of  salt 
The  bread  of  others,  and  how  hard  a  road 
The  going  down  and  up  another's  stairs. 

Par.  XVII,  58-60. 

(This  and  the  following  quotations  are  from  Longfellow's  trans- 
lation.) 

2  The  name  of  the  reigning  family  of  Verona,  12G0-1387. 
Daute's  Patron  became  Lord  of  Verona  in  1312. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  123 

The  deeper  naturally  would  tlie  Eternal  World 
impress  itself  on  liina ;  that  awful  raality  over  which, 
after  all,  this  Time-world,  with  its  Florences  and  ban- 
ishments, only  flutters  as  an  unreal  shadow.  Florence 
thou  shalt  never  see  :  but  Hell  and  Purgatory  and 
Heaven  thou  shalt  surely  see  !  What  is  Florence, 
Can  della  Scala,  and  the  World  and  Life  altogether  ? 
Eternity  :  thither,  of  a  truth,  not  elsewhither,  art 
thou  and  all  things  bound  !  The  great  soul  of  Dante, 
homeless  on  earth,  made  its  home  more  and  more  in 
that  awful  other  world.  Naturally  his  thoughts  brooded 
on  that,  as  on  the  one  fact  important  for  him.  Bod- 
ied or  bodiless,  it  is  the  one  fact  important  for  all 
men :  —  but  to  Dante,  in  that  age,  it  was  bodied  in 
fixed  certainty  of  scientific  shape  ;  he  no  more  doubted 
of  that  Malebolge  ^  Pool,  that  it  all  lay  there  with  its 
gloomy  circles,  with  its  alti  guai^^  and  that  he  himself 
should  see  it,  than  we  doubt  that  we  should  see  Con- 
stantinople if  we  went  thither.  Dante's  heart,  long 
filled  with  this,  brooding  over  it  in  speechless  thought 
and  awe,  bursts  forth  at  length  into  '  mj^stic  ^  unfath- 

^  "  Evil  pouches."  The  graphic  description  of  the  place  oc- 
curs in  Inf.  xviii,  Iff.:  — 

There  is  a  place  in  Hell  called  Malebolge, 
Wholly  of  stone  and  of  an  iron  color, 
As  is  the  circle  that  around  it  turns. 
2  "  Deep  groans,"  heard   by  Dante  just  within   the  gate  of 
Hell  :  — 

There  sighs,  complaints,  and  ululations  loud 
Resounded  through  the  air  without  a  star, 
Wlience  I,  at-the  beginning,  wept  thereat. 

Inf.  m,  22-24. 
^  No  better  explanation  of  the  meaning  of  this  word  could  be 
given  than  is  contained  in  this  paragraph. 


124  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

omable  song ; '  and  this  his  Divine  Comedy^  the 
most  remarkable  of  all  modern  Books,  is  the  result. 
It  must  have  been  a  great  solacement  to  Dante,  and 
was,  as  we  can  see,  a  proud  thought  for  him  at  times. 
That  he,  here  in  exile,  could  do  this  work ;  that  no 
Florence,  nor  no  man  or  men,  could  hinder  him  from 
doing  it,  or  even  much  help  him  in  doing  it.  He  knew 
too,  partly,  that  it  was  great ;  the  greatest  a  man 
could  do.  '  If  thou  follow  thy  star,  Se  tu  segui  tiia 
Stella,^  ^  —  so  could  the  Hero,  in  his  forsakenness,  in 
his  extreme  need,  still  say  to  himself :  "  Follow  thou 
thy  star,  thou  shalt  not  fail  of  a  glorious  haven  !  " 
The  labour  of  writing,  we  find,  and  indeed  could  know 
otherwise,  was  great  and  painful  for  him;  he  says, 
This  Book,  '  which  has  made  me  lean  for  many  years.'  ^ 

^  So  entitled  because,  beginning  in  trouble  and  confusion  in  the 
Inferno,  it  reaches  a  prosperous  and  happy  issue  in  the  Paradiso. 
^  The  words  of  Dante's  friend  and  teacher,  Brunetto  Latini, 
vhom  he  finds  in  Hell  :  — 

If  thou  thy  star  do  follow, 
Thou  canst  not  fail  thee  of  a  glorious  port, 
If  well  I  judged  in  the  life  beautiful.      Inf.  xv,  55-57. 
He  continues  with   an  invective  against   the   Florentines,  and 
Dante  responds  with  a  tender  expression  of  gratitude  for  what 
Latini  taught  him  in  life. 

^  If  e'er  it  happen  that  the  Poem  Sacred, 

To  which  both  heaven  and  earth  have  set  their  hand, 
So  that  it  many  a  year  hath  made  me  lean, 
O'ercome  the  cruelty  that  bars  me  out 

From  the  fair  sheepfold,  where  a  lamb  I  slumbered, 

Poet  will  I  return,  and  at  my  font 
Baptismal  will  I  take  the  laurel  crown, 

Par.  XXV,  1-5,  8,  9. 
Comp.  last  lines  with  nunquam  reverter,  p.  121. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  125 

Ah  yes,  it  was  won,  all  of  it,  with  pain  and  sore  toil, 
—  not  in  sport,  but  in  grim  earnest.  His  Book,  as 
indeed  most  good  Books  are,  has  been  written,  in 
many  senses,  with  his  heart's  blood.  It  is  his  whole 
history,  this  Book.  He  died  after  finishing  it;  not 
yet  very  old,  at  the  age  of  fif t3^-six  ;  —  broken-hearted 
rather,  as  is  said.  He  lies  buried  in  his  death-city 
Ravenna:  Jlic  claudor  Dantes  pCitriis  extorris  ah 
oris.  The  Florentines  begged  back  his  body,  in  a 
century  after  ;  the  Ravenna  people  would  not  give  it. 
"  Here  am  I  Dante  laid,  shut-out  from  my  native 
shores."  ^ 

I  said,  Dante's  Poem  was  a  Song  :  it  is  Tieck  ^  who 
calls  it  '  a  mystic  unfathomable  Song ; '  and  such  is 
literally  the  character  of  it.  Coleridge  remarks  very 
pertinently  somewhere,  that  wherever  you  find  a  sen- 
tence musically  worded,  of  true  rhythm  and  melody 
in  the  words,  there  is  something  deep  and  good  in  the 
meaning  too.  For  body  and  soul,  word  and  idea,  go 
strangely  together  here  as  everywhere.  Song  :  we  said 
before,  it  was  the  Heroic  of  Speech !  All  old  Poems, 
Homer's  and  the  rest,  are  authentically  Songs.  I 
would  say,  in  strictness,  that  all  right  Poems  are ; 
that  whatsoever  is  not  sung  is  properly  no  Poem,  but 
a  piece  of  Prose  cramped  into  jingling  lines,  —  to  the 
great  injury  of  the  grammar,  to  the  great  grief  of  the 
reader,  for  most  part !    What  we  want  to  get  at  is  the 

^  Epitapli  long  supposed  to  have  been  composed  by  Dante 
himself.  Dante's  remains  disappeared  from  their  resting-place 
in  Ravenna  just  before  they  were  to  be  transferred  to  Florence 
in  1519.    They  were  rediscovered  accidentally  in  1865. 

^  German  critic  and  poet  (1773-1853)  ;  one  of  the  founders 
of  the  German  Romantic  School  of  literature. 


126  LECrmtES   ON  HEROES 

thought  the  man  had,  if  he  had  any :  why  should  he 
twist  it  into  jingle,  if  he  could  speak  it  out  plainly  ? 
It  is  only  when  the  heart  of  him  is  rapt  into  true  pas- 
sion of  melody,  and  the  very  tones  of  him,  according 
to  Coleridge's  remark,  become  musical  by  the  great- 
ness, depth  and  music  of  his  thoughts,  that  we  can 
give  him  right  to  rhyme  and  sing ;  that  we  call  him  a 
Poet,  and  listen  to  him  as  the  Heroic  of  Speakers, — 
whose  speech  ?,s  Song.  Pretenders  to  this  are  many  ; 
and  to  an  earnest  reader,  I  doubt,  it  is  for  most  part 
a  very  melancholy,  not  to  say  an  insupportable  busi- 
ness, that  of  reading  rh^'uie  I  Khynie  that  had  no  in- 
ward necessity  to  be  rhymed  :  —  it  ought  to  have  told 
us  plainly,  without  any  jingle,  what  it  was  aiming  at. 
I  would  advise  all  men  who  can  speak  their  thought, 
not  to  sing  it ;  to  understand  that,  in  a  serious  time, 
among  serious  men,  there  is  no  vocation  in  them  for  sing- 
ing it.  Precisely  as  we  love  the  true  song,  and  are 
charmed  by  it  as  ^5y  something  di\ane,  so  shall  we  hate 
the  false  song,  and  account  it  a  mere  wooden  noise,  a 
thing  hollow,  superfluous,  altogether  an  insincere  and 
offensive  thing. 

I  give  Dante  my  highest  praise  when  I  say  of  his 
Divine  Comedy  that  it  is,  in  all  senses,  genuinely  a 
Song.  In  the  very  sound  of  it  there  is  a  canto  fermo ;  i 
it  proceeds  as  by  a  chant.  The  language,  his  simple 
terza  riina,  ^  doubtless  helped  him  in  this.    One  reads 

^  In  chiircli  music,  a  "  fixed  song  "  (melody,  or  air)  prescribed 
by  authority  of  the  Church  to  be  sung  without  change,  with 
whatever  variations  of  harmony  it  might  be  accompanied. 

"  "Third  rime."  Dante's  verse  consists  of  eleven-syllable  lines 
with  two-syllable  rimes,  alternate  lines  riming  together  in  groups 
of  three,  —  aba  bcb  cdc  ded,  etc.    See  add.  note. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  127 

along  naturally  with  a  sort  of  lilt.  But  I  add,  that  it 
could  not  be  otherwise  ;  for  the  essence  and  material 
of  the  work  are  themselves  rhythmic.  Its  depth,  and 
rapt  passion  and  sincerity,  makes  it  musical ;  —  go 
deep  enough,  there  is  music  everywhere.  A  true  in- 
ward symmetry,  what  one  calls  an  architectural  har- 
mony, reigns  in  it,  proportionates  it  all :  architectural ; 
which  also  partakes  of  the  character  of  music.  The 
three  kingdoms,  Inferno,  Purgatorio,  Paradlso,  look- 
out on  one  another  like  compartments  of  a  great  edi- 
fice ;  a  great  supernatural  world-cathedral,  piled-up 
there,  stern,  solemn,  awfid  ;  Dante's  World  of  Souls ! 
It  is,  at  bottom,  the  sincerest  of  all  Poems ;  sincerity, 
here  too,  we  find  to  be  the  measure  of  worth.  It  came 
deep  oiit  of  the  author's  heart  of  hearts ;  and  it  goes 
deep,  and  tln'ough  long  generations,  into  ours.  The 
people  of  Verona,  when  they  saw  him  on  the  streets, 
used  to  say,  "  Eccovi  V  uom  cli  e  siato  all '  Inferjio, 
See,  there  is  the  man  that  was  in  HeU  !  "  Ah  yes,  he 
had  been  in  HeU ;  —  in  Hell  enough,  in  long  severe 
sorrow  and  struggle  ;  as  the  like  of  him  is  pretty  sure 
to  have  been.  Commedias  that  come-out  divine  are  not 
accomplished  otherwise.  Thought,  true  labour  of  any 
kind,  highest  virtue  itself,  is  it  not  the  daughter  of 
Pain  ?  Born  as  out  of  the  black  whirlwind ;  —  true 
effort,  in  fact,  as  of  a  captive  struggling  to  free  him- 
self :  that  is  Thought.  In  aU  ways  we  are  '  to  become 
perfect  through  svjfering.''  ^  —  But,  as  I  say,  no  work 
known  to  me  is  so  elaborated  as  this  of  Dante's.    It  has 

^  For  it  became  him,  for  whom  are  all  things,  and  by  whom  are 
all  things,  in  bringing  many  sons  unto  glory,  to  make  the  captain 
of  their  salvation  perfect  through  sufferings.    Heb.  ii,  10. 


128  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

all  been  as  if  molten,  in  the  hottest  furnace  of  his  sonl. 
It  had  made  him  '  lean '  for  many  years.  Not  the  gen- 
eral whole  only ;  every  compartment  of  it  is  worked- 
out,  with  intense  earnestness,  into  truth,  into  clear 
visuality.  Each  answers  to  the  other ;  each  fits  in  its 
place,  like  a  marble  stone  accurately  hewn  and  pol- 
ished. It  is  the  soul  of  Dante,  and  in  this  the  soul  of 
the  middle  ages,  rendered  forever  rhythmically  visible 
there.  No  light  task  ;  a  right  intense  one :  but  a  task 
which  is  do7ie. 

Perhaps  one  would  say,  intensity,  with  the  much 
that  depends  on  it,  is  the  prevailing  character  of  Dante's 
genius.  Dante  does  not  come  before  us  as  a  large  catho- 
lic mind,  rather  a  narrow,  and  even  sectarian  mind : 
it  is  partly  the  fruit  of  his  age  and  position,  but  partly 
too  of  his  own  nature.  His  greatness  has,  in  all  senses, 
concentered  itself  into  fiery  emphasis  and  depth.  He 
is  world-great  not  because  he  is  world-wide,  but  because 
he  is  world-deep.  Through  all  objects  he  pierces  as  it 
were  down  into  the  heart  of  Being.  I  know  nothing  so 
intense  as  Dante.  Consider,  for  example,  to  begin  with 
the  outermost  development  of  his  intensity,  consider 
how  he  paints.  He  has  a  great  power  of  vision  ;  seizes 
the  very  type  of  a  thing ;  presents  that  and  nothing 
more.  You  remember  that  first  view  he  gets  of  the 
Hall  of  Dite  :  ^  red  pinnacle,  redhot  cone  of  iron  glow- 
ing through  the  dim  immensity  of  gloom  ;  —  so  vivid, 
so  distinct,  visible  at  once  and  forever !    It  is  as  an 

^  Its  mosques  already,  Master,  clearly 
Within  there  in  the  valley  I  discern 
Vermilion,  as  if  issuing  from  the  fire 
They  were.  Inf.  viii,  70-73. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  129 

emblem  of  the  whole  genius  of  Dante.  There  is  a  brev- 
ity, an  abrupt  precision  in  him :  Tacitus  ^  is  not  briefer, 
more  condensed ;  and  then  in  Dante  it  seems  a  natu- 
ral condensation,  spontaneous  to  the  man.  One  smit- 
ing word  ;  and  then  there  is  silence,  nothing  more  said. 
His  silence  is  more  eloquent  than  words.  It  is  strange 
with  what  a  sharp  decisive  grace  he  snatches  the  true 
likeness  of  a  matter :  cuts  into  the  matter  as  with  a 
pen  of  fire.  Plutus,  ^  the  blustering  giant,  collapses  at 
Virgil's  rebuke  ;  ^  it  is  '  as  the  sails  sink,  the  mast  be- 
ing suddenly  broken.'  Or  that  poor  Brunetto  Latini, 
with  the  cotto  aspetto^ '  face  haked^  parched,  brown  and 
lean  ;  *  and  the  '  fiery  snow  '  that  falls  on  them  there, 
a '  fiery  snow  without  wind,'  slow,  deliberate,  never-end- 
ing !  ^  Or  the  lids  of  those  Tombs ;  square  sarcopha- 

^  Latin  historian,  c.  55-117. 

2  The  god  of  riches,  jailer  of  the  avaricious  and  prodigal  in 
Hell. 

"  Be  silent,  thou  accursed  wolf;" 


Even  as  the  sails  inflated  by  the  wind 

Together  fall  involved  when  snaps  the  mast, 
So  fell  the  cruel  monster  to  the  earth. 

Inf.  vn,  8, 13-15. 

And  I,  when  he  stretched  forth  his  arm  to  me, 
On  his  baked  aspect  fastened  so  mine  eyes. 
That  the  scorched  countenance  prevented  not 

His  recognition  by  my  intellect ; 

And  bowing  down  my  face  unto  his  own, 

I  made  reply,  "Are  you  here  Ser  Brunetto  ?  " 

Inf.  XV,  25-30. 

O'er  all  the  sand-waste,  with  a  gradual  fall, 
Were  raining  down  dilated  flakes  of  fire, 
As  of  the  snow  on  Alp  without  a  wind. 

Inf  XIV,  28-30. 


130  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

guses,  in  that  silent  dim-burning  Hall,  each  with  its  Soul 
in  torment ;  the  lids  laid  open  there ;  they  are  to  be 
shut  at  the  Day  of  Judgment,  through  Eternity.  And 
how  Farinata  rises ;  and  how  Cavalcante  falls  —  at 
hearing  of  his  Son,  and  the  past  tense  '/'we'/^  The 
very  movements  in  Dante  have  something  brief  ;  swift, 
decisive,  almost  military.  It  is  of  the  inmost  essence 
of  his  genius,  this  sort  of  painting.  The  fiery,  swift 
Italian  nature  of  the  man,  so  silent,  passionate,  with 
its  quick  abrupt  movements,  its  silent  '  pale  rages,' 
speaks  itself  in  these  things. 

1  For  flames  between  the  sepulchres  were  scattered, 
By  which  they  so  intensely  heated  were, 
That  iron  more  so  asks  not  any  art. 
All  of  their  coverings  uplifted  were, 

And  from  them  issued  forth  such  dire  laments, 
Sooth  seemed  they  of  the  wretched  and  tormented. 

Inf.  IX,  118-123. 

"  Behold  there  Farinata  who  has  risen  ; 
From  the  waist  upwards  wholly  shalt  thou  see  him." 
I  had  already  fixed  mine  eyes  on  his, 

And  he  uproso  erect  with  breast  and  front 

E'en  as  if  Hell  ho  had  in  great  despite.         Inf.  x,  32-36. 

"  Where  is  my  son  ?  and  why  is  he  not  with  thee  ?  " 
And  I  to  him  [Cavalcante] :  "  I  come  not  of  myself  ; 
He  who  is  waiting  yonder  leads  me  here, 
Whom  in  disdain  perhaps  your  Guido  had." 

Upstarting  suddenly,  he  cried  out :  "  How 
Saidst  thou,  —  he  had  ?   Is  he  not  still  alive  ? 
Does  not  the  sweet  light  strike  upon  his  eyes  ?  " 
When  he  became  aware  of  some  delay, 
Which  I  before  ni}'  answer  made,  supine 
He  fell  again  and  forth  appeared  no  more. 

Inf.  X,  60-63,  67-72. 
Carlyle's  memory  has  substituted  'fue  '  =was,  for  '  ehhe  '  =  had. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  131 

For  though  this  of  painting  is  one  of  the  outer- 
most developments  of  a  man,  it  comes  like  all  else 
from  the  essential  faculty  of  him ;  it  is  physiognomical 
of  the  whole  man.  Find  a  man  whose  words  paint 
you  a  likeness;  you  have  found  a  man  worth  some- 
tliing ;  mark  his  manner  of  doing  it,  as  very  charac- 
teristic of  him.  In  the  first  place,  he  could  not  have 
discerned,  the  object  at  all,  or  seen  the  vital  type  of  it, 
unless  he  had,  what  we  may  call,  sympathised  with 
it, — had  sympathy  ill  him  to  bestow  on  objects.  He 
must  have  been  siiicere  about  it  too ;  sincere  and  sym- 
pathetic :  a  man  without  worth  cannot  give  you  the 
likeness  of  any  object ;  he  dwells  in  vague  outward- 
ness, fallacy  and  trivial  hearsay,  about  all  objects. 
And  indeed  may  we  not  say  that  intellect  altogether 
expresses  itself  in  this  power  of  discerning  what  an 
object  is  ?  Whatsoever  of  faculty  a  man's  mind  may 
have  will  come  out  here.  Is  it  even  of  business,  a 
matter  to  be  done?  The  gifted  man  is  he  who  sees 
the  essential  point,  and  leaves  aU  the  rest  aside  as 
surplusage  :  it  is  his  faculty  too,  the  man  of  busi- 
ness's  faculty,  that  he  discern  the  true  likeness,  not 
the  false  superficial  one,  of  the  thing  he  has  got  to 
work  in.  And  how  much  of  mo7'cility  is  in  the  kind 
of  insight  we  get  of  anything ;  '  the  eye  seeing  in  all 
things  what  it  brought  with  it  the  faculty  of  seeing '  I 
To  the  mean  eye  all  things  are  trivial,  as  certainly  as 
to  the  jaundiced  they  are  yellow.  Raphael,  the  Paint- 
ers tell  us,  is  the  best  of  all  Portrait-painters  withal. 
No  most  gifted  eye  can  exhaust  the  significance  of 
any  object.  In  the  commonest  human  face  there  lies 
more  than  Raphael  will  take-away  with  him. 


132  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

Dante's  painting  is  not  graphic  only,  brief,  true, 
and  of  a  vividness  as  of  fire  in  dark  night ;  taken  on 
the  wider  scale,  it  is  everyway  noble,  and  the  out- 
come of  a  great  soul.  Francesca  and  her  Lover, i  what 
qualities  in  that !  A  thing  woven  as  out  of  rain- 
bows, on  a  ground  of  eternal  black.  A  small  flute- 
voice  of  infinite  wail  speaks  there,  into  our  very  heart 
of  hearts.  A  touch  of  womanhood  in  it  too  :  della 
hella  2yerso7ia,  che  mifu  tolta  ;  and  how,  even  in  the 
Pit  of  woe,  it  is  a  solace  that  he  will  never  part  from 
her !  ^  Saddest  tragedy  in  these  aiti  guai.  And  the 
racking  winds,  in  that  aer  bruno,^  whirl  them  away 
again,  to  wail  forever !  —  Strange  to  think :  Dante 
was  the  friend  of  this  poor  Francesca's  father ;  *  Fran- 
cesca herself  may  have  sat  upon  the  Poet's  knee,  as  a 

^  Paolo,  Francesca  da  Rimini's  lover,  bad  been  deceitfully 
pointed  out  to  her  as  her  future  husband,  and  to  him  she  gave 
her  love.  Too  late  she  found  out  that  he  had  come  only  as 
representative  of  his  brother,  an  ill-appearing  cripple,  whom  her 
father  caused  her  to  marry.  The  husband,  finding  the  lovers 
together  one  day  not  long  after,  in  a  burst  of  jealous  anger  slew 
them  both. 

*  Love,  that  on  gentle  heart  doth  swiftly  seize, 

Seized  this  m^i  for  the  person  beautiful 
That  was  ta^ en  from  me,  and  still  the  mode  offends  me. 
Love,  that  exempts  no  one  beloved  from  loving. 
Seized  me  with  pleasure  of  this  man  so  strongly, 
That,  as  thou  seest,  it  doth  not  yet  desert  me; 
Love  has  conducted  us  unto  one  death; 
Caina  waiteth  him  who  quenched  our  life! 

Inf.  v,  100-107. 
^  "Brown  air;"  used  to  describe  the  approach  of  evening. 
Inf.  II,  1.    Dante  calls  the  air  of  this  circle  of  Hell  where  carnal 
sinners  are  punished  aer  maligna  and  tenehroso,  v,  86,  and  vi,  11. 

*  Nephew,  say  later  scholars. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  133 

bright  innocent  little  child.  Infinite  pity,^  yet  also 
infinite  rigour  of  law :  it  is  so  Nature  is  made ;  it  is 
so  Dante  discerned  that  she  was  made.  What  a  paltry 
notion  is  that  of  his  Divine  Comedy'' s  being  a  poor 
splenetic  impotent  terrestrial  libel ;  putting  those  into 
Hell  whom  he  could  not  be  avenged-upon  on  earth ! 
I  suppose  if  ever  pity,  tender  as  a  mother's,  was  in 
the  heart  of  any  man,  it  was  in  Dante's.  But  a  man 
who  does  not  know  rigour  cannot  pity  either.  His 
ver}"  pity  will  be  cowardly,  egoistic,  ■ —  sentimentality, 
or  little  better.  I  laiow  not  in  the  world  an  affection 
equal  to  that  of  Dante.  It  is  a  tenderness,  a  trem- 
bling, longing,  pitying  love :  like  the  wail  of  ^olean 
harps,  soft,  soft ;  like  a  child's  young  heart ;  —  and 
then  that  stern,  sore-saddened  heart !  These  longings 
of  his  towards  his  Beatrice ;  ^  their  meeting  together 

^  Francesca  having  told  her  story,  the  canto  ends:  — 
And  all  the  while  one  spirit  uttered  this, 
The  other  one  did  weep  so,  that,  for  pity, 
I  swooned  away  as  if  I  had  been  dying, 
And  fell,  even  as  a  dead  body  falls.       v,  139-142. 

2  E.  g.,  in  Purg.  xxvii,  where  Dante,  fearing  to  pass  through 
the  fire,  is  encouraged  by  Virgil:  — 

"  Now  look  thou.  Son, 
'Twixt  Beatrice  and  thee  there  is  this  wall." 


Even  thus,  my  obduracy  being  softened, 

I  turned  to  my  wise  Guide,  hearing  the  name 
That  in  my  memory  evermore  is  welling. 

Whereat  he  wagged  his  head,  and  said  :  "  How  now  ? 
Shall  we  stay  on  this  side  ?  "  then  smiled  as  one 
Doth  at  a  child  who 's  vanquished  by  an  apple. 


134  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

in  the  Paradiso ;  ^  his  gazing  in  her  pure  transfig- 
ured eyes,^  her  that  had  been  purified  by  deatli  so 
long,  separated  from  him  so  far :  —  one  likens  it  to 
the  song  of  angels ;  it  is  among  the  purest  utterances 
of  affection,  perhaps  the  very  purest,  that  ever  came 
out  of  a  human  soul. 

For  the  intense  Dante  is  intense  in  all  things  ;  he 
has  got  into  the  essence  of  all.  His  intellectual  in- 
sight as  painter,  on  occasion  too  as  reasoner,  is  but 
the  result  of  aU  other  sorts  of  intensity.  Morally 
great,  above  all,  we  must  call  him ;  it  is  the  begin- 
ning of  all.  His  scorn,  his  grief  are  as  transcendent 
as    his    love;  —  as    indeed,    what    are    they    but    the 

And  my  sweet  Father,  to  encourage  me, 
Discoursing  still  of  Beatrice  went  on, 
Saying  :  "  Her  eyes  I  seem  to  see  already  !  " 

35,  36,  40-45," 52-54. 

^  Their  first  meeting  is  in  the  Earthly  Paradise,  on  the  top  of  the 
Mountain  of  Purgatory  (Purg.  xxx),  where,  altliongh  her  face  is 
veiled,  Dante's  spirit  "  Of  ancient  love  the  mighty  influence  felt." 
*  So  steadfast  and  attentive  were  mine  eyes 
In  satisfying  their  decennial  thirst. 
That  all  my  otlier  senses  were  extinct, 
And  upon  this  side  and  on  that  they  had 
Walls  of  indifference,  so  the  holy  smile 
Drew  them  unto  itself  with  the  old  net. 

Pitrg.  xxxil,  1-6. 

Virgil,  who  has  guided  Dante  through  Hell  and  Purgatory, 
leaves  him,  for  the  last  third  of  his  journey,  to  Beatrice,  wlio 
is  portrayed  in  the  Paradiso  with  constantly  increasing  beauty 
and  splendor.  Dante  abundantly  fulfills  the  promise  at  the  end 
of  the  Vita  Nuova :  "  So  that  if  it  shall  be  the  pleasure  of  Him, 
through  whom  all  things  live,  that  my  life  shall  continue  some- 
what longer,  I  hope  to  say  of  her  what  never  yet  was  said  of 
any  woman." 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  135 

inverse  or  converse  of  his  love?  ^  A  Dlo  spiacentl  ed 
a'  nemicl  sui,  Hateful  to  God  and  to  the  enemies  of 
God:'  lofty  scorn,  unappeasable  silent  rejarobation  and 
aversion ;  '  JVbn  ragionam  di  lor^  We  will  not  speak 
of  them,  look  only  and  pass.'  Or  think  of  this ; 
'  They  have  not  the  hope  to  die,  Non  han  spcranza 
di  morte.''  ^  One  day,  it  had  risen  sternly  benign  on 
the  scathed  heart  of  Dante,  that  he,  wretched,  never- 
resting,  worn  as  he  was,  would  full  surely  die  ;  '  that 
Destiny  itself  could  not  doom  him  not  to  die.'  Such 
words  are  in  this  man.  For  rigour,  earnestness  and 
depth,  he  is  not  to  be  paralleled  in  the  modern  world ; 
to  seek  his  parallel  we  must  go  into  the  Hebrew 
Bible,  and  live  with  the  antique  Prophets  there. 

I  do  not  agree  with  much  modern  criticism,  in  greatly 
preferring  the  Inferno  to  the  two  other  parts  of  the 
Divine  Commedia.  Such  preference  belongs,  I  imag- 
ine, to  our  general  Byronism  of  taste,  and  is  like  to 
be  a  transient  feeling.  The  Pnrgatorio  and  Paradiso, 
especially  the  former,  one  would  almost  say,  is  even 
more  excellent  than  it.  It  is  a  noble  things  that  Pur- 
gatorio,  '  Mountain  of  Purification  ; '  an  emblem  of 
the  noblest  conception  of  that  age.  If  Sin  is  so  fatal, 
and  Hell  is  and  must  be  so  rigorous,  awfiil,  yet  in 
Repentance  too  is  man  purified;  Repentance  is  the 
grand  Christian  act.  It  is  beautiful  how  Dante  works 
it  out.    The  tremolar  delV  onde,  that  '  trembling '  of 

^  The  three  lines  here  quoted  (/«/.  iir,  63,  51,  46)  relate  to 

"  that  caitiff  choir 
Of  Angels,  who  have  not  rebellions  been, 
Nor  faithful  were  to  God,  but  were  for  self."     37-39. 
Carlyle's  lively  sympathy  with  Dante's  scorn  reflects  his  own 
uncompromising  positiveness. 


136  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

the  ocean-waves,  under  the  first  pure  gleam  of  morn- 
ing, 1  dawning  afar  on  the  wandering  Two,  is  as  the 
type  of  an  altered  mood.  Hope  has  now  dawned  ; 
never-dying  Hope,  if  in  company  still  with  heavy 
sorrow.  The  obscure  sojourn  of  dcemons  and  re- 
probate is  underfoot ;  a  soft  breathing  of  penitence 
mounts  higher  and  higher,  to  the  Throne  of  Mercy  it- 
self. "  Pray  for  me,"  the  denizens  of  that  Mount  of 
Pain  all  say  to  him.  "  Tell  my  Giovanna  to  pray  for 
me,"  my  daughter  Giovanna ;  "  I  think  her  mother 
loves  me  no  more  !  "  ^  They  toil  painfully  up  by  that 
winding  steep,  '  bent-down  like  corbels  of  a  build- 
ing, '  3  some  of  them,  —  crushed-together  so  '  for  the 
sin  of  pride ; '  yet  nevertheless  in  years,  in  ages  and 
seons,  they  shall  have  reached  the  top,  which  is 
Heaven's  gate,  and  by  Mercy  shall  have  been  ad- 
mitted in.    The  joy  too  of  all,  when  one  has  prevailed; 

^  The  dawn  was  vanquishing  the  matin  hour 
Which  fled  before  it,  so  that  from  afar 
I  recognized  the  trembling  of  the  sea. 

Purg.  1, 115-117. 
2  When  thou  shalt  be  beyond  the  waters  wide, 
Tell  my  Giovanna  that  she  pray  for  me, 
Where  answer  to  the  innocent  is  made. 
I  do  not  think  her  mother  loves  me  more, 
Since  she  has  laid  aside  her  wimple  white, 
Which  she,  unhappy,  needs  must  wish  again. 

Purg.  VIII,  70-72. 
'  As  to  sustain  a  ceiling  or  a  roof, 

In  place  of  corbel,  oftentimes,  a  figure 
Is  seen  to  join  its  knees  unto  its  breast, 
Which  makes  of  the  unreal  real  anguish 
Arise  in  him  who  sees  it;  fashioned  thus 
Beheld  I  those,  when  I  had  ta'en  good  heed. 

Purg.  X,  130-135. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  137 

the  whole  Mountain  shakes  with  joy,  and  a  psalm  of 
praise  rises,^  when  one  soul  has  perfected  repentance 
and  got  its  sin  and  misery  left  behind !  I  call  all  this 
a  noble  embodiment  of  a  true  noble  thought. 

But  indeed  the  Three  compartments  mutually  sup- 
port one  another,  are  indispensable  to  one  another. 
The  I^aradiso,  a  kind  of  inarticulate  music  to  me,  is 
the  redeeming  side  of  the  Inferno  ;  the  Inferno  with- 
out it  were  untrue.  All  three  make-up  the  true  Unseen 
World,  as  figured  in  the  Christianity  of  the  Middle 
Ages ;  a  thing  forever  memorable,  forever  true  in  the 
essence  of  it,  to  all  men.  It  was  perhaps  delineated 
in  no  human  soul  with  such  depth  of  veracity  as  in 
this  of  Dante's ;  a  man  sent  to  sing  it,  to  keep  it  long 
memorable.  Very  notable  with  what  brief  simplicity 
he  passes  out  of  the  every-day  reality,  into  the  Invis- 
ible one;  and  in  the  second  or  third  stanza,  we  find 
ourselves  in  the  World  of  Spirits ;  and  dwell  there,  as 
among  things  palj)able,  indubitable !  To  Dante  they 
were  so ;  the  real  world,  as  it  is  called,  and  its  facts, 
was  but  the  threshold  to  an  infinitely  higher  Fact  of 
a  World.  At  bottom,  the  one  was  as  ^;)reiernatural  as 
the  other.  Has  not  each  man  a  soul?  He  will  not 
only  be  a- spirit,  but  is  one.  To  the  earnest  Dante  it 
is  all  one  visible  Fact ;  he  believes  it,  sees  it ;  is  the 
Poet  of  it  in  virtue  of  that.  Sincerity,  I  say  again,  is 
the  saving  merit,  now  as  always. 

^  Purg.  XX  (124-141)  tells  of  the  occurrence;  xxi  gives  the 
explanation  :  — 

*'  It  trembles  here,  whenever  any  soul 

Feels  itself  pure,  so  that  it  soars,  or  moves 

To  mount  aloft,  and  such  a  cry  attends  it.     58-60. 


138  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

Dante's  Hell,  Purgatory,  Paradise,  are  a  sjTnbol 
withal,  an  emblematic  representation  of  his  Belief 
about  this  Universe :  —  some  Critic  in  a  future  ac"e, 
like  those  Scandinavian  ones  the  other  day,  who  has 
ceased  altogether  to  think  as  Dante  did,  may  find  this 
too  all  an  '  Allegory,'  jDcrhaps  an  idle  Allegory  !  It  is 
a  sublime  embodiment,  or  sublimest,  of  the  soul  of 
Christianity.  It  expresses,  as  in  huge  worldwide  archi- 
tectural emblems,  how  the  Christian  Dante  felt  Good 
and  Evil  to  be  the  two  polar  elements  of  this  Creation, 
on  which  it  all  turns ;  that  these  two  differ  not  by 
prefcrahUiti/  of  one  to  the  other,  but  by  incompatibility 
absolute  and  infinite ;  that  the  one  is  excellent  and 
high  as  light  and  Heaven,  the  other  hideous,  black  as 
Gehenna  and  the  Pit  of  Hell  I  Everlasting  Justice, 
yet  with  Penitence,  with  everlasting  Pity,  —  all  Chris- 
tianism,  as  Dante  and  the  Middle  Ages  had  it,  is 
emblemed  here.  Emblemed :  and  yet,  as  I  urged  the 
other  day,  with  what  entire  truth  of  purpose ;  how 
unconscious  of  any  embleming !  Hell,  Pui'gatory,  Para- 
dise :  these  things  were  not  fashioned  as  emblems ; 
was  there,  in  our  Modern  European  Mind,  any  thought 
at  all  of  their  being  emblems  I  Were  they  not  indubit- 
able awful  facts ;  the  whole  heart  of  man  taking  them 
for  practically  true,  all  Nature  everywhere  confirming 
them?  So  is  it  always  in  these  things.  Men  do  not 
believe  an  Allegory.  The  future  Critic,  whatever  his 
new  thought  may  be,  who  considers  this  of  Dante  to 
have  been  all  got-up  as  an  AUegor}^,  wiU  commit  one 
sore  mistake !  —  Paganism  we  recognised  as  a  veracious 
expression  of  the  earnest  awe-struck  feeling  of  man 
towards  the  Universe ;  veracious,  true  once,  and  still 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  139 

not  without  worth  for  us.  But  mark  here  the  difference 
of  Paganism  and  Christianisui ;  one  great  difference. 
Paganism  emblemed  chiefly  the  Operations  of  Nature  ; 
the  destinies,  efforts,  combinations,  vicissitudes  of  things 
and  men  in  this  world;  Christianism  emblemed  the 
Law  of  Human  Duty,  the  Moral  Law  of  Man.  One 
was  for  the  sensuous  nature :  a  rude  helpless  utterance 
of  the  first  Thought  of  men,  —  the  chief  recognised 
virtue.  Courage,  Superiority  to  Fear.  The  other  was 
not  for  the  sensuous  nature,  but  for  the  moral.  What 
a  progress  is  here,  if  in  that  one  respect  only  !  — 

And  so  in  this  Dante,  as  we  said,  had  ten  silent 
centuries,  in  a  very  strange  way,  found  a  voice.  The 
Divhia  Commedia  is  of  Dante's  writing  ;  yet  in  truth 
it  belongs  to  ten  Christian  centuries,  only  the  finishing 
of  it  is  Dante's.  So  always.  The  craftsman  there,  the 
smith  with  that  metal  of  his,  with  these  tools,  with 
these  cunning  methods,  —  how  little  of  all  he  does 
is  properly  his  work !  All  past  inventive  men  work 
there  with  him  ;  —  as  indeed  with  all  of  us,  in  all 
things.  Dante  is  the  spokesman  of  the  Middle  Ages  ; 
the  Thought  they  lived  by  stands  here,  in  everlasting 
music.  These  sublime  ideas  of  his,  terrible  and  beauti- 
ful, are  the  fruit  of  the  Christian  Meditation  of  all 
the  good  men  who  had  gone  before  him.  Precious 
they ;  but  also  is  not  he  precious  ?  Much,  had  not  he 
spoken,  would  have  been  dumb ;  not  dead,  yet  living 
voiceless. 

On  the  whole,  is  it  not  an  utterance,  this  mystic 
Song,  at  once  of  one  of  the  greatest  human  souls,  and 
of  the  highest  thing  that  Europe  had  hitherto  realised 


140  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

for  itself  ?  Christianism,  as  Dante  sings  it,  is  another 
than  Paganism  in  the  rude  Norse  mind  ;  another  than 
'Bastard  Cliristianism '  half-articulately  spoken  in  the 
Arab  Desert,  seven-hundred  years  before !  —  The  noble 
idea  made  real  hitherto  among  men,  is  sung,  and 
emblemed-forth  abidingly,  by  one  of  the  noblest  men. 
In  the  one  sense  and  in  the  other,  are  we  not  right 
glad  to  possess  it  ?  As  I  calculate,  it  may  last  yet  for 
long  thousands  of  years.  For  the  thing  that  is  uttered 
from  the  inmost  parts  of  a  man's  soul,  differs  altogether 
from  what  is  uttered  by  the  outer  part.  The  outer 
is  of  the  day,  under  the  empire  of  mode;  the  outer 
passes  away,  in  swift  endless  changes;  the  inmost  is 
the  same  yesterday,  today  and  forever.  True  souls, 
in  all  generations  of  the  world,  who  look  on  this  Dante, 
will  find  a  brotherhood  in  him ;  the  deep  sincerity  of 
his  thoughts,  his  woes  and  hopes,  will  speak  likewise 
to  their  sincerity  ;  they  will  feel  that  this  Dante  too 
was  a  brother.  Napoleon  in  Saint-Helena  is  charmed 
with  the  genial  veracity  of  old  Homer.  The  oldest  He- 
brew Prophet,  under  a  vesture  the  most  diverse  from 
ours,  does  yet,  because  he  speaks  from  the  heart  of 
man,  speak  to  all  men's  hearts.  It  is  the  one  sole 
secret  of  continuing  long  memorable.  Dante,  for  depth 
of  sincerity,  is  like  an  antique  Prophet  too  ;  his  words, 
like  theirs,  come  from  his  very  heart.  One  need  not 
wonder  if  it  were  predicted  that  his  Poem  might "  be 
the  most  enduring  thing  our  Europe  has  yet  made ; 
for  nothing  so  endures  as  a  truly  spoken  word.  All 
cathedrals,  pontificalities,  brass  and  stone,  and  outer 
arrangement  never  so  lasting,  are  brief  in  comparison 
to  an  unfathomable  heart-sonc  like  this :  one   feels  as 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  141 

i£  it  might  survive,  still  of  importance  to  men,  when 
these  had  all  sunk  into  new  irrecognisable  combina- 
tions, and  had  ceased  individually  to  be,  Europe  has 
made  much  ;  great  cities,  great  empires,  encyclopaedias, 
creeds,  bodies  of  opinion  and  practice:  but  it  has  made 
little  of  the  class  of  Dante's  Thought.  Homer  yet  is, 
veritably  present  face  to  face  with  every  open  soul  of 
us ;  and  Greece,  where  is  it  f  Desolate  for  thousands 
of  years  ;  away,  vanished ;  a  bewildered  heap  of  stones 
and  rubbish,  the  life  and  existence  of  it  all  gone. 
Like  a  dream ;  like  the  dust  of  King  Agamemnon ! 
Greece  was ;  Greece,  except  in  the  words  it  spoke,  is 
not. 

The  uses  of  this  Dante?  We  will  not  say  much 
about  his  '  uses.'  A  human  soul  who  has  once  got  into 
that  primal  element  of  Song,  and  sung-forth  fitly 
somewhat  therefrom,  has  worked  in  the  dei^ths  of  our 
existence ;  feeding  through  long  times  the  life-roo^s  of 
all  excellent  human  things  whatsoever,  —  in  a  way  that 
'  utilities '  will  not  succeed  well  in  calcidating  !  We 
will  not  estimate  the  Sun  by  the  quantity  of  gas-light 
it  saves  us  ;  Dante  shall  be  invaluable,  or  of  no  value. 
One  remark  I  may  make :  the  contrast  in  this  respect 
between  the  Hero-Poet  and  the  Hero-Prophet.  In  a 
hundred  years,  Mahomet,  as  we  saw,  had  his  Arabians 
at  Grenada  and  at  Delhi ;  Dante's  Italians  seem  to  be 
yet  very  much  where  they  were.  Shall  we  say,  then, 
Dante's  effect  on  the  world  was  small  in  comparison  ? 
Not  so ;  his  arena  is  far  more  restricted ;  but  also  it  is 
far  nobler,  clearer  ;  —  perhaps  not  less  but  more  im- 
portant. Mahomet  speaks  to  great  masses  of  men,  in 
the  coarse  dialect  adapted    to   such  ;  a  dialect   filled 


142  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

with  inconsistencies,  crudities,  follies :  on  the  great 
masses  alone  can  he  act,  and  there  with  good  and  with 
evil  strangely  blended.  Dante  speaks  to  the  noble,  the 
pure  and  great,  in  all  times  and  jilaces.  Neither  does 
he  grow  obsolete,  as  the  other  does.  Dante  burns  as 
a  pure  star,  fixed  there  in  the  firmament,  at  which  the 
great  and  the  high  of  all  ages  kindle  themselves  :  he 
is  the  possession  of  all  the  chosen  of  the  world  for  un- 
counted time.  Dante,  one  calculates,  may  long  survive 
Mahomet.  In  this  way  the  balance  may  be  made 
straight  again. 

But,  at  any  rate,  it  is  not  by  what  is  called  their 
effect  on  the  world,  by  what  we  can  judge  of  their  ef- 
fect there,  that  a  man  and  his  work  are  measured. 
Effect?  Influence?  Utility?  Let  a  man  f/o  his  work ; 
the  fruit  of  it  is  the  care  of  Another  than  he.  It  will 
grow  its  own  fruit ;  and  whether  embodied  in  Caliph 
Thrones  and  Arabian  Conquests,  so  that  it  '  fills  all 
Morning  and  Evening  Newspapers,'  and  all  Histories, 
which  are  a  kind  of  distilled  Newspapers ;  or  not  em- 
bodied so  at  aU  ;  —  what  matters  that  ?  That  is  not 
the  real  fruit  of  it !  The  Arabian  Caliph,  in  so  far  only 
as  he  did  something,  was  something.  If  the  great 
Cause  of  Man,  and  Man's  work  in  God's  Earth,  got 
no  furtherance  from  the  Arabian  Caliph,  then  no  mat- 
ter how  many  scimetars  he  drew,  how  many  gold  pias- 
ters pocketed,  and  what  uproar  and  blaring  he  made 
in  this  world,  —  he  was  but  a  loud-sounding  inanity 
and  futility ;  at  bottom,  he  was  not  at  all.  Let  us  honour 
the  great  empire  of  Silence^  once  more !  The  boundless 
treasury  which  we  do  not  jingle  in  our  pockets,  or  count 
up  and  present  before  men  !    It  is  perhaps,  of  all  things, 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  143 

the  usefiilest    for    each    of   us  to  do,   in  these    loud 
times.  —  — 

As  Dante,  the  Italian  man,  was  sent  into  our  world 
to  embody  musically  the  Religion  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
the  Religion  of  our  Modern  Europe,  its  Inner  Life ; 
so  Shakspeare,  we  may  say,  embodies  for  us  the  Outer 
Life  of  our  Europe  as  developed  then,  its  chivalries, 
courtesies,  humours,  ambitions,  what  practical  way  of 
thinking,  acting,  looking  at  the  world,  men  then  had. 
As  in  Homer  we  may  still  construe  Old  Greece ;  so  in 
Shakspeare  and  Dante,  after  thousands  of  years,  what 
our  modern  Eiu'ope  was,  in  Faith  and  in  Practice,  will 
stiU  be  legible.  Dante  has  given  us  the  Faith  or  Soul ; 
Shakspeare,  in  a  not  less  noble  way,  has  given  us  the 
Practice  or  body.  This  latter  also  we  were  to  have ;  a 
man  was  sent  for  it,  the  man  Shakspeare.  Just  when 
that  chivalry  way  of  life  had  reached  its  last  finish,  and 
was  on  the  point  of  breaking  down  into  slow  or  swift 
dissolution,  as  we  now  see  it  everywhere,  this  other  sov- 
ereign Poet,  with  his  seeing  eyie,  with  his  perennial 
singing  voice,  was  sent  to  take  note  of  it,  to  give  long- 
enduring  record  of  it.  Two  fit  men  :  Dante,  deep,  fierce 
as  the  central  fire  of  the  world  ;  Shakspeare,  wide,  pla- 
cid, far-seeing,  as  the  Sun,  the  upper  light  of  the  world. 
Italy  produced  the  one  world-voice;  we  English  had 
the  honour  of  producing  the  other. 

Curious  enough  how,  as  it  were  by  mere  accident, 
this  man  came  to  us.  I  think  always,  so  great,  quiet, 
complete  and  self-sufficing  is  this  Shakspeare,  had  the 
Warwickshire  Squire  not  prosecuted  him  for  deer- 
stealing,  we  had  perhaps  never   heard  of   him  as  a 


144  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

Poet !  The  woods  and  skies,  the  rustic  Life  of  Man 
in  Stratford  there,  had  been  enough  for  this  man ! 
But  indeed  that  strange  outbudding  of  our  whole  Eng- 
lish Existence,  which  we  call  the  Elizabethan  Era, 
did  not  it  too  come  as  of  its  own  accord  ?  The  '  Tree 
Igdrasil '  buds  and  withers  by  its  own  laws,  —  too 
deep  for  our  scamiing.  Yet  it  does  bud  and  wither, 
and  every  bough  and  leaf  of  it  is  there,  by  fixed  eter- 
nal laws ;  not  a  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  ^  but  comes  at  the 
hour  fit  for  him.  Curious,  I  say,  and  not  sufficiently 
considered  :  how  ever}i:hing  does  cooperate  with  all ; 
not  a  leaf  rotting  on  the  highway  but  is  indissoluble 
portion  of  solar  and  stellar  systems  ;  no  thought,  word 
or  act  of  man  but  has  sprung  withal  out  of  all  men, 
and  works  sooner  or  later,  recognisably  or  irrecogiiis- 
ably,  on  all  men  !  It  is  all  a  Tree :  circulation  of  sap 
and  influences,  mutual  communication  of  every  minut- 
est leaf  with  the  lowest  talon  of  a  root,  with  every 
other  greatest  and  minutest  portion  of  the  whole.  The 
Tree  Igdrasil,  that  has  its  roots  down  in  the  Kingdoms 
of  Hela  and  Death,  and  whose  boughs  overspread  the 
highest  Heaven !  — 

In  some  sense  it  may  be  said  that  this  glorious  Eliza- 
bethan Era  with  its  Shakspeare,  as  the  outcome  and 
flowerage  of  all  which  had  preceded  it,  is  itself  attri- 
butable to  the  Catholicism  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
Christian  Faith,  which  was  the  theme  of  Dante's 
Song,  had  produced  this  Practical  Life  wliich  Shak- 
speare was  to  sing.  For  Religion  then,  as  it  now  and 
always  is,  was  the  soul  of  Practice ;  the  primary  vital 
fact  in  men's  life.  A;id  remark  here,  as  rather  curi- 
^  The  "  Warwickshire  Squire  "  afore-mentioned. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  145 

ous,  tbat  Middle-Age  Catholicism  was  abolished,  so 
far  as  Acts  of  Parliament  coidd  abolish  it,  before 
Shakspeare,  the  noblest  product  of  it,  made  his  ap- 
jjearance.  He  did  make  his  appearance  nevertheless. 
Nature  at  her  own  time,  with  Catholicism  or  what 
else  might  be  necessary,  sent  him  forth ;  taking  small 
thought  of  Acts  of  Parliament.  King-Henrys,^  Queen- 
Elizabeths  1  go  their  way ;  •  and  Nature  too  goes  hers. 
Acts  of  Parliament,  on  the  whole,  are  small,  notwith- 
standing the  noise  they  make.  What  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment, debate  at  St.  Stephen 's,^  on  the  hustings  ^  or 
.elsewhere,  was  it  that  brought  this  Shakspeare  into 
being?  No  dining  at  Freemasons'  Tavern,^  opening 
subscription-lists,  selling  of  shares,  and  infinite  other 
janghng  and  true  or  false  endeavouring  !  This  Eliza- 
bethan Era,  and  all  its  nobleness  and  blessedness, 
came  without  proclamation,  preparation  of  ours.  Price- 
less Shakspeare  was  the  free  gift  of  Nature  ;  given  alto- 
gether silently ;  —  received  altogether  silently,  as  if  it 

^  Mentioned  as  effective  opponents  of  Roman  Catholicism  in 
England. 

2  St.  Stephen's  Chapel,  the  site  of  which  is  now  occupied  by 
St.  Stephen's  Hall  in  the  Houses  of  Parliament,  was  once  the 
meeting-place  of  the  House  of  Commons. 

^  "  The  temporary  platform  from  which,  previous  to  the  Ballot 
Act  of  1872,  the  nomination  of  candidates  for  Parliament  was 
made,  and  on  which  these  stood  while  addressing  the  electors." 
New  Eng.  Diet. 

■*  In  London,  where  at  a  meeting  of  distinguished  men  includ- 
ing Carlyle,  six  weeks  after  the  delivery  of  the  present  lecture, 
it  was  unanimously  voted  to  establish  a  library.  Subscription 
lists  were  opened,  etc.  The  project  was  most  successfully  car- 
ried out.  Obviously  this  sentence  was  added  in  preparing  the 
lecture  for  the  press. 


146  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

had  been  a  thing  of  little  account.  And  yet,  very  lit- 
erally, it  is  a  priceless  thing.  One  should  look  at  that 
side  of  matters  too. 

Of  this  Shakspeare  of  ours,  perhaps  the  opinion  one 
sometimes  hears  a  little  idolatrously  expressed  is,  in 
fact,  the  right  one  ;  I  tliink  the  best  judgment  not  of 
this  country  only,  but  of  Europe  at  large,  is  slowly 
pointing  to  the  conclusion,  That  Shakspeare  is  the 
chief -of  all  Poets  hitherto  ;  the  gi-eatest  intellect  who, 
in  our  recorded  world,  has  left  record  of  himself  in  the 
way  of  Literature.  On  the  whole,  I  know  not  such  a 
power  of  vision,  such  a  faculty  of  thought,  if  we  take 
all  the  characters  of  it,  in  auy  other  man.  Such  a 
calmness  of  depth  ;  placid  joyous  strength  ;  all  things 
imaged  in  that  great  soul  of  his  so  true  and  clear,  as 
in  a  tranquil  unfathomable  sea!  It  has  been  said, 
that  in  the  constructing  of  Shakspeare's  Dramas  there 
is,  apart  from  all  other  '  faculties '  as  they  are  called, 
an  understanding  manifested,  equal  to  that  in  Bacon's 
Novum  Organimi.  That  is  true  ;  and  it  is  not  a  truth 
that  strikes  every  one.  It  would  become  more  apparent 
if  we  tried,  any  of  us  for  himself,  how,  out  of  Shaks- 
peare's dramatic  materials,  loe  could  fashion  such  a 
result !  The  built  house  seems  all  so  fit,  —  everyway 
as  it  should  be,  as  if  it  came  there  by  its  own  law  and 
the  nature  of  things,  —  we  forget  the  rude  disorderly 
quarry  it  was  shaped  from.  The  very  perfection  of 
the  house,  as  if  Nature  herself  had  made  it,  hides  the 
builder's  merit.  Perfect,  more  perfect  than  any  other 
man,  we  may  call  Shakspeare  in  this  :  he  discerns, 
knows  as  by  instinct,  what  condition  he  works  tmder, 
what  his  materials  are,  what  his  own  force  and  its 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  147 

relation  to  them  is.  It  is  not  a  transitory  glance  of 
insight  that  will  suffice ;  it  is  deliberate  illumination 
of  the.  whole  matter;  it  is  a  calmly  seeing  eye;  a 
great  intellect,  in  short.  How  a  man,  of  some  wide 
thing  that  he  has  witnessed,  will  construct  a  narrative, 
what  kind  of  picture  and  delineation  he  will  give  of  it, 
—  is  the  best  measvire  you  could  get  of  what  intellect 
is  in  the  man.  Which  circumstance  is  vital  and  shall 
stand  prominent ;  which  unessential,  fit  to  be  sup- 
pressed ;  where  is  the  true  beginning^  the  true  sequence 
and  ending  ?  To  find  out  this,  you  task  the  whole 
force  of  insight  that  is  in  the  man.  He  must  under- 
stand the  thing  ;  according  to  the  depth  of  his  under- 
standing, will  the  fitness  of  his  answer  be.  You  will 
try  him  so.  Does  like  join  itself  to  like;  does  the 
spirit  of  method  stir  in  that  confusion,  so  that  its 
embroihnent  becomes  order  ?  Can  the  man  say,  Fiat 
hiQC,  Let  there  be  light ;  ^  and  out  of  chaos  make  a 
world  ?  Precisely  as  there  is  light  in  himself,  will  he 
accomplish  this. 

Or  indeed  we  may  say  again,  it  is  in  what  I  called 
Portrait-painting,  delineating  of  men  and  things, 
especially  of  men,  that  Shakspeare  is  great.  All  the 
greatness  of  the  man  comes  out  decisively  here.  It  is 
unexampled,  I  think,  that  calm  creative  perspicacity 
of  Shakspeare.  The  thing  he  looks  at  reveals  not  this 
or  that  face  of  it,  but  its  inmost  heart,  and  generic 
secret :  it  dissolves  itself  as  in  light  before  him,  so  that 
he  discerns  the  perfect  structure  of  it.  Creative,  we 
said  :  poetic  creation,  what  is  this  too  but  seeing  the 

1  And  God  said,  Let  there  be  light :  and  there  was  light. 
Gen.  i,  3. 


148  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

tiling  sufficiently?  The  toord  that  will  describe  the 
thing,  follows  of  itself  from  such  clear  intense  sight  of 
the  thing.  And  is  not  Shakspeare's  morality^  his  valour, 
candour,  tolerance,  truthfulness  ;  his  whole  victorious 
strength  and  greatness,  which  can  triumph  over  such 
ol)structions,  \Tsible  there  too?  Great  as  the  world  ! 
No  twisted^  poor  convex-concave  ^  mirror,  reflecting  all 
objects  with  its  owti  convexities  and  concavities  ;  a  per- 
fectly level  mirror  ;  — -  that  is  to  say  withal,  if  we  will 
understand  it,  a  man  justly  related  to  all  things  and 
men,  a  good  man.  It  is. truly  a  lordly  spectacle  how 
this  great  soul  takes-in  all  kinds  of  men  and  objects, 
a  Falstaff,  an  Othello,  a  Juliet,  a  Coriolanus  ;  sets  them 
all  forth  to  us  in  their  round  completeness ;  loving,  just, 
the  equal  brother  of  all.  JVovum  Orgcauon,  and  all  the 
intellect  you  will  find  in  Bacon,  is  of  a  quite  secondary 
order ;  earthly,  material,  poor  in  com2:)arison  with  this. 
Among  modern  men,  one  finds,  in  strictness,  almost 
nothing  of  the  same  rank.  Goethe  alone,  since  the 
days  of  Shakspeare,  reminds  me  of  it.  Of  him  too  you 
say  that  he  saio  the  object ;  you  may  say  what  he  him- 
self says  of  Shakspeare  :  '  His  characters  are  like 
watches  with  dial-plates  of  transparent  crystal ;  they 
show  you  the  hour  like  others,  and  the  inward  mechan- 
ism also  is  all  visible.' 

The  seeing  eye  !  It  is  this  that  discloses  the  inner 
harmony  of  things ;  what  Nature  meant,  what  musical 
idea  Nature  has  wrapped-up  in  these  often  rough  em- 
bodiments. Something  she  did  mean.  To  the  seeing 
eye  that  something  were  discernible.    Are  they  base, 

^  I.  e.,  some  parts  of  the  surface  convex  and  others  concave, 
so  that  it  would  give  an  utterly  distorted  reflection. 


THE   HERO  AS  POET  149 

miserable  things  ?  You  can  laugh  over  them,  you  can 
weep  over  them  ;  you  can  in  some  way  or  other  genially 
relate  3'ourself  to  them ;  —  you  can,  at  lowest,  hold 
your  peace  about  them,  turn  away  your  own  and  others' 
face  from  them,  till  the  hour  come  for  practically  ex- 
terminating and  extinguishing  them  I  At  bottom,  it  is 
the  Poet's  first  gift,  as  it  is  all  men's,  that  he  have  in- 
tellect enough.  He  will  be  a  Poet  if  he  have :  a  Poet 
in  word ;  or  failing  that,  perhaps  still  better,  a  Poet 
in  act.  Whether  he  write  at  all ;  and  if  so,  whether  in 
prose  or  in  verse,  wiU  depend  on  accidents  :  who  knows 
on  what  extremely  trivial  accidents,  — ■  perhaps  on 
his  having  had  a  singing-master,  on  his  being  taught 
to  sing  in  his  boyhood  !  But  the  faculty  which  enables 
him  to  discern  the  inner  heart  of  things,  and  the  har- 
mony that  dwells  there  (for  whatsoever  exists  has  a  har- 
mony in  the  heart  of  it,  or  it  would  not  hold  together 
and  exist),  is  not  the  result  of  habits  or  accidents,  but 
the  gift  of  Nature  herself  ;  the  primary  outfit  for  a 
Heroic  Man  in  what  sort  soever.  To  the  Poet,  as  to 
every  other,  we  say  first  of  all.  See.  If  you  cannot  do 
that,  it  is  of  no  use  to  keep  stringing  rhymes  together, 
jingling  sensibilities  against  each  other,  and  name  your- 
self a  Poet ;  there  is  no  hope  for  you.  If  you  can,  there 
is,  in  prose  or  verse,  in  action  or  speculation,  all  manner 
of  hope.  The  crabbed  old  Schoolmaster  used  to  ask, 
when  they  brought  him  a  new  pupil,  "  But  are  ye  sure 
he's  not  a  dunce? ^''  Why,  really  one  might  ask  the 
same  thing,  in  regard  to  every  man  proposed  for  what- 
soever function  ;  and  consider  it  as  the  one  inquiry 
needful :  Are  ye  sure  he  's  not  a  dunce  ?  There  is,  in 
this  world,  no  other  entirely  fatal  person. 


150  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

For,  in  fact,  I  say  the  degree  of  vision  that  dwells  in 
a  man  is  a  correct  measure  of  the  man.  If  called  to 
define  Shakspeare's  faculty,  I  should  say  superiority 
of  Intellect,  and  think  I  had  included  all  under  that. 
What  indeed  are  faculties  ?  We  talk  of  faculties  as  if 
they  were  distinct,  things  separable  ;  as  if  a  man  had 
intellect,  imagination,  fancy,  &c.,  as  he  has  hands,  feet 
and  arms.  That  is  a  capital  error.  Then  again,  we 
hear  of  a  man's  '  intellectual  nature,'  and  of  his 
'  moral  nature,'  as  if  these  again  were  divisible,  and 
existed  apart.  Necessities  of  langaiage  do  perhaps 
prescribe  such  forms  of  utterance  ;  we  must  speak,  I 
am  aware,  in  that  way,  if  we  are  to  s])eak  at  all.  But 
words  ought  not  to  harden  into  things  for  us.  It  seems 
to  me,  our  apprehension  of  this  matter  is,  for  most 
part,  radically  falsified  thereby.  We  ought  to  know 
withal,  and  to  keep  forever  in  mind,  that  these  divi- 
sions are  at  bottom  but  names ;  that  man's  spiritual 
nature,  the  vital  Force  which  dwells  in  him,  is  essen- 
tially one  and  indivisible  ;  that  what  we  caU  imagina- 
tion, fancy,  understanding,  and  so  forth,  are  but 
different  figures  of  the  same  Power  of  Insight,  all 
indissolubly  connected  with  each  other,  physiognomi- 
caUy  related ;  that  if  we  knew  one  of  them,  we  might 
know  all  of  them.  Morality  itself,  what  we  call  the 
moral  quality  of  a  man,  what  is  this  but  another 
side  of  the  one  vital  Force  whereby  he  is  and  works  ? 
All  that  a  man  does  is  physiognomical  of  him. 
You  may  see  how  a  man  would  fight,  by  the  way  in 
which  he  sings;  his  courage,  or  want  of  courage,  is 
visible  in  the  word  he  utters,  in  the  opinion  he  has 
formed,  no  less  than  in  the  stroke  he  strikes.    He  is 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  151 

one  ;  and  preaches  the  same  Self  abroad  in  all  these 
ways. 

Without  hands  a  man  might  have  feet,  and  could 
stiU  walk  :  but,  consider  it,  —  without  morality,  intel- 
lect were  impossible  for  him  ;  a  thoroughly  immoral 
man  could  not  know  anything  at  all !  To  know  a 
thing,  what  we  can  call  knowing,  a  man  must  first 
love  the  thing,  sympathise  with  it :  that  is,  be  virtu- 
ously related  to  it.  If  he  have  not  the  justice  to  put 
down  his  own  selfishness  at  every  turn,  the  courage  to 
stand  by  the  dangerous-true  at  every  turn,  how  shall 
he  know  ?  His  virtues,  all  of  them,  will  lie  recorded 
in  his  knowledge.  Nature,  with  her  truth,  remains  to 
the  bad,  to  the  selfish  and  the  pusillanimous  forever 
a  sealed  book :  what  such  can  know  of  Nature  is  mean, 
superficial,  small ;  for  the  uses  of  the  day  merely. 
—  But  does  not  the  very  Fox  know  something  of  Na- 
tui-e  ?  Exactly  so :  it  knows  where  the  geese  lodge ! 
The  hmnan  Reynard,  very  frequent  everywhere  in  the 
world,  what  more  does  he  know  but  this  and  the  like 
of  this  ?  Nay,  it  shoidd  be  considered  too,  that  if  the 
Fox  had  not  a  certain  vulpine  morality,  he  could  not 
even  know  v^^here  the  geese  were,  or  get  at  the  geese ! 
If  he  spent  his  time  in  splenetic  atrabiliar  reflections 
on  his  own  misery,  his  ill  usage  by  Nature,  Fortune 
and  other  Foxes,  and  so  forth ;  and  had  not  courage, 
promptitude,  practicality,  and  other  suitable  vulpine 
gifts  and  graces,  he  would  catch  no  geese.  We  may 
say  of  the  Fox  too,  that  his  morality  and  insight  are 
of  the  same  dimensions  ;  different  faces  of  the  same 
internal  unity  of  vulpine  life  !  —  These  things  are 
worth   stating;  for  the   contrary   of  them  acts  with 


152  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

manifold  very  baleful  perversion,  in  this  time :  what 
limitations,  modifications  they  require,  your  own  can- 
dour will  supply. 

If  1  say,  therefore,  that  Shakspeare  is  the  gi-eatest 
of  Intellects,  I  have  said  all  concerning  him.  But 
there  is  more  in  Shakspeare's  intellect  than  we  have 
yet  seen.  It  is  what  I  call  an  unconscious  intellect ; 
there  is  more  virtue  in  it  than  he  himself  is  aware  of. 
Novalis  beautifully  remarks  of  him,  that  those  Dramas 
of  his  are  Products  of  Nature  too,  deep  as  Nature 
herself.  I  find  a  great  truth  in  this  saying.  Shak- 
speare's Art  is  not  Artifice ;  the  noblest  worth  of  it 
is  not  there  by  plan  or  precoutrivance.  It  grows-up 
from  the  deeps  of  Nature,  through  this  noble  sincere 
soul,  who  is  a  voice  of  Nature.  The  latest  generations 
of  men  will  find  new  meanings  in  Shakspeare,  new 
elucidations  of  their  own  human  being ;  '  new  har- 
monies with  the  infinite  structure  of  the  Universe ; 
concurrences  with  later  ideas,  affinities  with  the 
higher  powers  and  senses  of  man.'  This  well  deserves 
meditating.  It  is  Nature's  highest  reward  to  a  true 
simple  great  soul,  that  he  get  thus  to  be  a  2>art  of 
herself.  Such  a  man's  works,  whatsoever  he  with  ut- 
most conscious  exertion  and  forethought  shall  accom- 
plish, grow  up  withal  ?/7?conscio«sly,  from  the  unknown 
deeps  in  him ;  —  as  the  oak-tree  grows  from  the 
Earth's  bosom,  as  the  mountains  and  waters  shape 
themselves ;  with  a  symmetry  grounded  on  Natm-e's 
own  laws,  comformable  to  all  Truth  whatsoever.  How 
much  in  Shakspeare  lies  hid ;  his  sorrows,  his  silent 
struggles  known  to  himself ;  much  that  was  not 
known  at  all,  not   speakable  at  all :  like  roots,  like 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  153 

sap    and    forces    working   underground !     Speech    is 
great ;  but  Silence  is  greater. 

Withal  the  joyful  tranquillity  of  this  man  is  notable. 
I  will  not  blame  Dante  for  his  misery  :  it  is  as  battle 
without  victory ;  but  true  battle,  —  the  first,  indispens- 
able thing.  Yet  I  call  Shakspeare  greater  than  Dante, 
in  that  he  fought  truly,  and  did  conquer.  Doubt  it 
not,  he  had  his  own  sorrows  :  those  Sonnets  of  his 
will  even  testify  expressly  in  what  deep  waters  he  had 
waded,  and  swum  struggling  for  his  life  ;  —  as  what 
man  like  him  ever  failed  to  have  to  do  ?  It  seems  to 
me  a  heedless  notion,  our  common  one,  that  he  sat 
like  a  bird  on  the  bough ;  and  sang  forth,  free  and 
offhand,  never  knowing  the  troubles  of  other  men. 
Not  so ;  with  no  man  is  it  so.  How  could  a  man 
travel  forward  from  rustic  deer-poaching  to  such 
tragedy-writing,  and  not  fall-in  with  sorrows  by  the 
way  ?  Or,  still  better,  how  could  a  man  delineate  a 
Hamlet,  a  Coriolanus,  a  Macbeth,  so  many  suffering 
heroic  hearts,  if  his  own  heroic  heart  had  never  suffered  ? 
—  And  now,  in  contrast  with  all  this,  observe  his 
mirthfulness,  his  genuine  overflowing  love  of  laugh- 
ter !  You  would  say,  in  no  point  does  he  exaggerate 
but  only  in  laughter.  Fieiy  objurgations,  words  that 
pierce  and  burn,  are  to  be  found  in  Shakspeare ;  yet 
he  is  always  in  measure  here ;  never  what  Johnson 
would  remark  as  a  specially  '  good  hater.'  But  his 
laughter  seems  to  pour  from  him  in  floods  ;  he  heaps 
all  manner  of  ridicidous  nicknames  on  the  butt  he 
is  bantering,  tumbles  and  tosses  him  in  all  sorts  of 
horse-play ;  you  would  say,  with  his  whole  heart  laughs. 
And  then,  if  not  always   the  finest,  it  is   always   a 


154  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

genial  laughter.  Not  at  mere  weakness,  at  misery  or 
poverty ;  never.  No  miin  who  can  laugh,  what  we  call 
laughing,  will  laugh  at  these  things.  It  is  some  poor 
character  only  desiring  to  laugh,  and  have  the  credit 
of  wit,  that  does  so.  Laughter  means  sympathy ; 
good  laughter  is  not  '  the  crackling  of  thorns  under 
the  pot.'  ^  Even  at  stupidity  and  pretension  this  Shak- 
speare  does  not  laugh  otherwise  than  genially.  Dog- 
berry and  Verges  ^  tickle  our  very  hearts  ;  and  we 
dismiss  them  covered  with  explosions  of  laughter  :  but 
we  like  the  poor  fellows  only  the  better  for  our  laugh- 
ing ;  and  hope  they  will  get  on  well  there,  and  con- 
tinue Presidents  of  the  City-watch.  Such  laughter,  like 
sunshine  on  the  deep  sea,  is  very  beautiful  to  me. 

We  have  no  room  to  speak  of  Shakspeare's  individ- 
ual works  ;  though  perhaps  there  is  much  still  waiting 
to  be  said  on  that  head.  Had  we,  for  instance,  all  his 
plays  reviewed  as  Hamlet,  in  Wilhehn  Meister^ 
is  !  A  thing  which  might,  one  day,  be  done.  August 
Wilhehn  Schlegel*  has  a  remark  on  his  Historical 
Plays,  Henry  Fifth  and  the  others,  which  is  worth 
rememberuig.  He  calls  them  a  kind  of  National  Epic. 
Marlborough,^  you  recollect,  said,  he  knew  no  English 

^  For  as  the  crackling  of  thorns  under  a  pot,  so  is  the  laughter 
of  the  fool  :  this  also  is  vanity.    Eccles.  vii,  6. 

2  In  Much  Ado,  esp.  in,  iii,  first  part,  —  one  of  the  best  bits 
of  "  laughter  "  in  all  literature. 

8  In  Meister^s  Apprenliceship,  Book  iv,  iii-v,  xii,  passim. 

*  Eminent  German  critic  and  poet  (1767-1845). 

*  Duke  of  Marlborough  (1650-1722),  commander  of  the  allied 
forces  against  France,  1702-1711.  Won  the  important  victory 
of  Blenheim,  1704. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  155 

History  but  what  he  had  learned  from  Shakspeare. 
There  are  really,  if  we  look  to  it,  few  as  memorable 
Histories.  The  great  salient  points  are  admirably 
seized  ;  all  rounds  itself  off,  into  a  kind  of  rhythmic 
colierence ;  it  is,  as  Schlegel  says,  epic  ;  —  as  indeed 
all  delineation  by  a  great  thinker  will  be.  There  are 
right  beautiful  things  in  those  Pieces,  which  indeed 
together  form  one  beautiful  thinar.  That  battle  of 
Agin  court  ^  strikes  me  as  one  of  the  most  perfect 
things,  in  its  sort,  we  anywhere  have  of  Shaksjjeare's. 
The  description  of  the  two  hosts :  the  worn-out,  jaded 
English ;  the  dread  hour,  big  with  destiny,  when  the 
battle  shall  begin  ;  and  then  that  deathless  valour : 
"  Ye  good  yeomen,  whose  limbs  were  made  in  Eng- 
gland  I  "  2  There  is  a  noble  Patriotism  in  it,  —  far 
other  than  the  '  indifference '  you  sometimes  hear 
ascribed  to  Shakspeare.  A  true  English  heart  breathes, 
calm  and  strong,  through  the  whole  business ;  not 
boisterous,  protrusive  ;  all  the  better  for  that.  There 
is  a  sound  in  it  like  the  ring  of  steel.  This  man  too 
had  a  right  stroke  in  him,  had  it  come  to  that  I 

But  I  will  say,  of  Shakspeare's  works  generally, 
that  we  have  no  full  impress  of  him  there ;  even  as 
full  as  we  have  of  many  men.    His  works  are  so  many 

^  Hen.  V,  IV  ;  Agincourt  is  in  northern  France,  SE  of  Calais; 
there  Henry  V  with  15,000  English  completely  defeated  60,000 
French  in  1415. 

2  From  the  splendid  and  famous  speech  before  Harfleur  :  — 

Once  more  unto  the  breach,  dear  friends,  oi^ce  more; 
Or  close  the  wall  up  with  our  English  dead. 

And  yon,  good  yeomen, 
Whose  limbs  were  made  in  England,  show  us  here 
The  mettle  of  your  pasture.  m,  i. 


156  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

windows,  through  which  we  see  a  glimpse  of  the  world 
that  was  in  him.  All  his  works  seem,  comparatively- 
speaking,  cursory,  imperfect,  written  under  cramping 
circumstances ;  givmg  only  here  and  there  a  note  of 
the  full  utterance  of  the  man.  Passages  there  are  that 
come  upon  you  like  splendour  out  of  Heaven ;  bursts 
of  radiance,  illuminating  the  very  heart  of  the  thing : 
you  say,  "  That  is  true,  spoken  once  and  forever ; 
wheresoever  and  whensoever  there  is  an  open  human 
soul,  that  wiU  be  recognised  as  true !  "  Such  bursts, 
however,  make  us  feel  that  the  surrounding  matter  is 
not  radiant;  that  it  is,  in  part,  temporary^  conven- 
tional. Alas,  Shakspeare  had  to  wTite  for  the  Globe 
Playhouse  :  his  great  soul  had  to  crush  itself,  as  it 
could,  into  that  and  no  other  mould.  It  was  with  him, 
then,  as  it  is  with  us  all.  No  man  works  save  under 
conditions.  The  sculptor  cannot  set  his  own  free 
Thought  before  us  ;  but  his  Thought  as  he  could  trans- 
late it  into  the  stone  that  was  given,  with  the  tools 
that  were  given.  Disjecta  memhra  ^  are  all  that  we 
find  of  any  Poet,  or  of  any  man. 

Whoever  looks  intelligently  at  this  Shakspeare  may 
recognise  that  he  too  was  a  Prophet,  in  his  way  ;  of 
an  insight  analogous  to  the  Prophetic,  though  he  took 
it  up  in  another  strain.  Nature  seemed  to  this  man 
also  divine ;  w/ispeakable,  deep  as  Tophet,  high  as 
Heaven  :  '  We  are  such  stuff  as  Dreams  are  made  of ! ' 
That  scrolP  in   Westminster  Abbey,  which  few  read 

^  Scattered  parts. 

2  Held  in  the  left  hand  of  the  statue  of  Shakespeare.  On  it  is 
inscribed  a  somewhat  inaccurate  version  of  a  part  of  Prospero's 
famous  speech  in  The  Tempest,  iv,  i,  152  ff. :  — 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  157 

with  understanding-,  is  of  the  depth  of  any  seer.  But 
the  man  sang  ;  did  not  preach,  except  musically.  We 
called  Dante  the  melodious  Priest  of  Middle-Age  Catho- 
licism. May  we  not  call  Shakspeare  the  still  more 
melodious  Priest  of  a  true  Catholicism,  the  '  Univer- 
sal Church '  of  the  Future  and  of  aU  times  ?  No  nar- 
row superstition,  harsh  asceticism,  intolerance,  fanat- 
ical fierceness  or  perversion :  a  Revelation,  so  far  as 
it  goes,  that  such  a  thousandfold  hidden  beauty  and 
divineness  dwells  in  all  Nature  ;  which  let  all  men 
worship  as  they  can  !  We  may  say  without  offence, 
that  there  rises  a  kind  of  universal  Psalm  out  of  this 
Shakspeare  too ;  not  unfit  to  make  itself  heard  among- 
the  still  more  sacred  Psahns.  Not  in  disharmony  with 
these,  if  we  understood  them,  but  in  harmony !  —  I 
cannot  call  this  Shakspeare  a  '  Sceptic,'  as  some  do ; 
his  indifference  to  the  creeds  and  theological  quarrels 
of  his  time  misleading  them.  No  :  neither  unpatriotic, 
though  he  says  little  about  his  Patriotism  ;  nor  scep- 
tic, though  he  says  little  about  his  Faith.  Such  '  indif- 
ference '  was  the  fruit  of  his  greatness  withal :  his 
whole  heart  was  in  his  own  grand  sphere  of  worship 
(we  may  call  it  such)  ;  these  other  controversies,  vitally 
important  to  other  men,  were  not  vital  to  him. 

But  call  it  worship,  call  it  what  you  will,  is  it  not 
a  right  glorious  thing,  and  set  of  things,  this  that  Shak- 

The  cloud-capp'd  towers,  the  gorgeous  palaces, 
The  solemn  temples,  the  great  globe  itself, 
Yea,  aU  which  it  inherit,  shall  dissolve 
And,  like  this  insiibstantial  pageant  faded, 
Leave  not  a  rack  behind.     We  are  such  stuff 
As  dreams  are  madfe  on,  and  our  little  life 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep. 


158  LECTTTRES   ON  HEROES 

speare  has  brought  us  ?  For  myself,  I  feel  that  there 
is  actually  a  kind  of  saeredness  in  the  fact  of  such  a 
man  being  sent  into  this  Earth.  Is  he  not  an  eye  to 
us  all ;  a  blessed  -heaven-sent  Bringer  of  Light  ?  — 
And,  at  bottom,  was  it  not  perhaps  far  better  that 
this  Shakspeare,  everyway  an  unconscious  man,  was 
conscious  of  no  Heavenly  message  ?  He  did  not  feel, 
like-  Mahomet,  because  he  saw  into  those  internal 
Splendours,  that  he  specially  was  the  '  Prophet  of 
God  : '  and  was  he  not  greater  than  Mahomet  in  that  ? 
Greater  ;  and  also,  if  we  compute  strictly,  as  we  did 
in  Dante's  case,  more  successful.  It  was  intrinsically 
an  error  that  notion  of  Mahomet's,  of  his  supreme 
Prophethood  ;  and  has  come  down  to  us  inextricably 
involved  in  error  to  tliis  day  ;  dragging  along  with  it 
such  a  coil  of  fables,  impurities,  intolerances,  as  makes 
it  a  questionable  step  for  me  here  and  now  to  sa}^  as 
I  have  done,  that  Mahomet  was  a  true  Speaker  at  all, 
and  not  rather  an  ambitious  charlatan,  perversity  and 
simulacrum ;  no  Speaker,  but  a  Babbler !  Even  in 
Arabia,  as  I  compute,  Mahomet  will  have  exhausted 
himself  and  become  obsolete,  while  this  Shakspeare, 
this  Dante  may  still  be  3'oung ;  — while  this  ShaksiJeare 
may  still  pretend  to  be  a  Priest  of  Mankind,  of  Arabia 
as  of  other  places,  for  unlimited  periods  to  come ! 

Compared  with  any  speaker  or  singer  one  knows, 
even  with  ^schylus^  or  Homer,  why  should  he  not, 
for  veracity  and  universality,  last  like  them?  He  is 
sincere  as  they  ;  reaches  deep  down  like  them,  to  the 
universal  and  perennial.    But  as  for  Mahomet,  I  think 

'  Greatest  of  Greek  dramatists  ♦(525-456  b.  c),  author  of 
Prometheus  Bound,  The  Seven  against  Thebes,  Agamemnon. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  159 

it  had  been  better  for  him  not  to  be  so  conscious  ! 
Alas,  poor  Mahomet  ;  all  that  he  was  conscious  of 
was  a  mere  error  ;  a  futility  and  triviality,  —  as  indeed 
such  ever  is.  The  truly  gi-eat  in  him  too  was  the  un- 
conscious :  that  he  was  a  wild  Arab  lion  of  the  desert, 
and  did  speak-out  with  that  great  thunder-voice  of  his, 
not  by  words  which  he  thought  to  be  great,  but  by 
actions,  by  feelings,  by  a  history  which  were  great ! 
His  Koran  has  become  a  stupid  piece  of  prolix  absurd- 
ity ;  we  do  not  believe,  like  him,  that  God  wrote  that ! 
The  Great  Man  here  too,  as  always,  is  a  Force  of 
Nature  :  whatsoever  is  tridy  great  in  him  springs-up 
from  the  inarticulate  deeps. 

Well :  this  is  our  poor  Warwickshire  Peasant,  who 
rose  to  be  Manager  of  a  Playhouse,  so  that  he  could 
live  without  begging  ;  whom  the  Earl  of  Southampton 
cast  some  kind  glances  on ;  whom  Sir  Thomas  Lucy, 
many  thanks  to  him,  was  for  sending  to  the  Tread- 
mill !  1  We  did  not  account  him  a  god,  like  Odin, 
while  he  dwelt  with  us  ;  —  on  which  point  there  were 
much  to  be  said.  But  I  will  say  rather,  or  repeat : 
In  spite  of  the  sad  state  Hero-worship  now  lies  in, 
consider  what  this  Shakspeare  has  actually  become 
among  us.  Which  Englishman  we  ever  made,  in  this 
land  of  ours,  which  million  of  Englishmen,  would  we 
not  give-up  rather  than  the  Stratford  Peasant  ?  There 
is  no  resfiment  of  hiohest  Disfnitaries  that  we  would 
sell  him  for.  He  is  the  grandest  thing  we  have  yet 
done.    For  our  honour  among  foreign  nations,  as  an 

^  Used  in  prisons  of  Carlyle's  time  as  an  instrument  of  dis- 
cipline, to  provide  "  labor  "  for  prisoners. 


160  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

ornament  to  our  English  Household,  what  item  is 
there  that  we  would  not  surrender  rather  than  him  ? 
Consider  now,  if  they  asked  us,  Will  you  give-up 
your  Indian  Empire  or  your  Shakspeare,  you  English  ; 
never  have  had  any  Indian  Empire,  or  never  have  had 
any  Shakspeare  ?  Eeally  it  were  a  grave  question. 
Official  persons  would  answer  doubtless  in  official  lan- 
guage ;  but  we,  for  our  part  too,  should  not  we  be 
forced  to  answer :  Indian  Empire,  or  no  Indian  Em- 
pire ;  we  cannot  do  without  Shakspeare !  Indian 
Empire  \vill  go,  at  any  rate,  some  day ;  but  this  Shak- 
speare does  not  go,  he  lasts  forever  with  us ;  we  can- 
not give-up  our  Shakspeare ! 

Nay,  apart  from  spiritualities ;  and  considering 
him  merely  as  a  real,  marketable,  tangibly-useful  pos- 
session. England,  before  long,  this  Island  of  ours, 
will  hold  but  a  small  fraction  of  the  English :  in 
America,  in  New  Holland,^  east  and  west  to  the  very 
Antipodes,  there  will  be  a  Saxondom  covering  great 
spaces  of  the  Globe.  And  now,  what  is  it  that  can 
keep  all  these  together  into  virtually  one  Nation,  so 
that  they  do  not  fall-out  and  fight,  but  live  at  peace, 
in  brotherlike  intercourse,  helping  one  another  ?  This 
is  justly  regarded  as  the  gi*eatest  practical  problem, 
the  thing  all  manner  of  sovereignties  and  governments 
are  here  to  accomplish  :  what  is  it  that  will  accom- 
plish this  ?  Acts  of  Parliament,  administrative  prime- 
ministers  cannot.  America  is  parted  from  us,  so  far 
as  Parliament  could  part  it.  Call  it  not  fantastic,  for 
there  is  much  reality  in  it :  Here,  I  say,  is  an  Eng- 
lish King,  whom  no  time  or  chance.  Parliament  or 
combination  of  Parliaments,  can  dethrone !  This 
^  An  early  name  for  Australia. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET  161 

King  Shakspeare,  does  not  he  shine,  in  crowned 
sovereignity,  over  us  all,  -as  the  noblest,  gentlest, 
yet  strongest  of  rallying-signs  ;  iVidestructible  ;  really 
more  valuable  in  that  point  of  view  than  any  other 
means  or  appliance  whatsoever?  We  can  fancy  him 
as  radiant  aloft  over  all  the  Nations  of  Englishmen, 
a  thousand  years  hence.  From  Paramatta,^  from  New 
York,  wheresoever,  under  what  sort  of  Parish-Consta- 
ble soever,  English  men  and  women  are,  they  will  say 
to  one  another :  "  Yes,  this  Shakspeare  is  ours ;  we 
produced  him,  we  speak  and  think  by  him  ;  we  are  of 
one  blood  and  kind  with  him."  The  most  common- 
sense  politician,  too,  if  he  pleases,  may  think  of  that. 

Yes,  truly,  it  is  a  great  thing  for  a  Nation  that  it 
get  an  articulate  voice ;  that  it  produce  a  man  who 
will  speak-forth  melodiously  what  the  heart  of  it 
means !  Italy,  for  example,  poor  Italy  lies  dismem- 
bered, scattered  asunder,  not  appearing  in  any  proto- 
col or  treaty  as  a  unity  at  all ;  yet  the  noble  Italy  is 
actually  one :  Italy  produced  its  Dante ;  Italy  can 
speak!  The  Czar  of  all  the  Russias,  he  is  strong  with 
so  many  bayonets,  Cossacks  and  cannons ;  and  does 
a  great  feat  in  keeping  such  a  tract  of  Earth  politi- 
cally together ;  but  he  cannot  yet  speak.  Something 
great  in  him,  but  it  is  a  dmnb  greatness.  He  has  had 
no  voice  of  genius,  to  be  heard  of  all  men  and  times. 
He  must  learn  to  speak.  He  is  a  great  dumb  monster 
hitherto.  His  cannons  and  Cossacks  will  all  have 
rusted  into  nonentity,  while  that  Dante's  voice  is  still 
audible.  The  Nation  that  has  a  Dante  is  bound  to- 
gether as  no  dumb  Russia  can  be.  —  We  must  here 
end  what  we  had  to  say  of  the  Hero-Poet. 
1  In  New  South  Wales,  Australia. 


LECTURE  IV 

THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.     LUTHER  ;  REFORMATION  : 
KNOX  ;  PURITANISM 

[Friday,  15th  May  1840.] 

Our  present  discourse  is  to  be  of  the  Great  Man  as 
Priest.  We  have  repeatedly  endeavoured  to  explain 
that  all  sorts  of  Heroes  are  intrinsically  of  the  same 
material ;  that  given  a  great  soul,  open  to  the  Divine 
Significance  of  Life,  then  there  is  given  a  man  fit  to 
speak  of  this,  to  sing  of  this,  to  fight  and  work  for  this, 
in  a  great,  victorious,  enduring  manner ;  there  is  given 
a  Hero,  —  the  outward  shape  of  whom  will  depend  on 
the  time  and  the  environment  he  finds  himself  in.  The 
Priest  too,  .as  I  understand  it,  is  a  kind  of  Prophet ;  in 
him  too  there  is  required  to  be  a  light  of  inspiration, 
as  we  must  name  it.  He  presides  over  the  worship  of 
the  people  ;  is  the  Uniter  of  them  with  the  Unseen 
Holy.  He  is  the  spiritual  Captain  of  the  people ;  as  the 
Prophet  is  their  spiritual  King  with  many  captains : 
he  guides  them  heavenward,  by  wise  guidance  through 
this  Earth  and  its  work.  The  ideal  of  him  is,  that  he  too 
be  what  we  can  call  a  voice  from  the  unseen  Heaven ; 
interpreting,  even  as  the  Prophet  did,  and  in  a  more 
familiar  manner  unfolding  the  same  to  men.  The  un- 
seen Heaven,  —  the  '  open  secret  of  the  Universe,' — 
which  so  few  have  ai>  eye  for !  He  is  the  Prophet  shorn 
of  his  more  awful  splendour ;  burning  with  mild  equa- 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  163 

ble  radiance,  as  the  enlightener  of  daily  life.  This,  I 
say,  is  the  ideal  of  a  Priest.  So  in  old  times  ;  so  in 
these,  and  in  all  times.  One  knows  very  well  that,  in 
reducing  ideals  to  practice,  great  latitude  of  tolerance 
is  needful ;  very  great.  But  a  Priest  who  is  not  this  at 
all,  who  does  not  any  longer  aim  or  try  to  be  this,  is  a 
character —  of  whom  we  had  rather  not  speak  in  this 
place. 

Luther  and  Knox  were  by  express  vocation  Priests, 
and  did  faithfully  perform  that  function  in  its  common 
sense.  Yet  it  will  suit  us  better  here  to  consider  them 
chiefly  in  their  historical  character,  rather  as  Re- 
formers than  Priests.  There  have  been  other  Priests 
perhaps  equally  notable,  in  calmer  times,  for  doing 
faithfully  the  office  of  a  Leader  of  Worship ;  bringing 
down,  by  faithful  heroism  in  that  kind,  a  light  from 
Heaven  into  the  daily  life  of  their  people ;  leading  them 
forward,  as  under  God's  guidance,  in  the  way  wherein 
they  were  to  go.  But  when  this  same  tvay  was  a  rough 
one,  of  battle,  confusion  and  danger,  the  spiritual  Cap- 
tain, who  led  through  that,  becomes,  especially  to  us 
who  live  under  the  fruit  of  his  leading,  more  notable 
than  any  other.  He  is  the  warfaring  and  battling 
Priest ;  who  led  his  people,  not  to  quiet  faithful  labour- 
as  in  smooth  times,  but  to  faithful  valorous  conflict, 
in  times  all  violent,  dismembered :  a  more  perilous  ser- 
vice, and  a  more  memorable  one,  be  it  higher  or  not. 
These  two  men  we  will  account  our  best  Priests,  inas- 
much as  they  were  our  best  Reformers.  Nay  I  may 
ask.  Is  not  every  true  Reformer,  by  the  nature  of  him, 
a.  Priest  first  of  all?  He  appeals  to  Heaven's  invisible 
justice  against  Earth's  visible  force ;   knows  that  it. 


164  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

the  invisible,  is  strong  and  alone  strong.  lie  is  a 
believer  in  the  divine  truth  of  things ;  a  seer,  seeing 
through  the  shows  of  things ;  a  worshipper,  in  one  way 
or  the  other,  of  the  divine  truth  of  tilings ;  a  Priest, 
that  is.  If  he  be  not  first  a  Priest,  he  will  never  be 
good  for  much  as  a  Reformer. 

Thus  then,  as  we  have  seen  Great  Men,  in  various 
situations,  building-up  Religions,  heroic  Forms  of  hu- 
man Existence  in  this  world,  Theories  of  Life  worthy 
to  be  sung  by  a  Dante,  Practices  of  Life  by  a  Shak- 
speare,  —  we  are  now  to  see  the  reverse  jDrocess  ;  which 
also  is  necessary,  which  also  may  be  carried-on  in  the 
Heroic  manner.  Curious  how  this  should  be  necessary : 
yet  necessary  it  is.  The  mild  shining  of  the  Poet's 
light  has  to  give  place  to  the  fierce  lightning  of  the 
Reformer :  unfortunately  the  Reformer  too  is  a  per- 
sonage that  cannot  fail  in  History !  The  Poet  indeed, 
with  his  mildness,  what  is  he  but  the  product  and  ulti- 
mate adjustment  of  Reform,  or  Prophecy,  with  its 
fierceness?  No  wild  Saint  Dominies^  and  Thebaid 
Eremites,^  there  had  been  no  melodious  Dante  ;  rough 
Practical  Endeavour,  Scandinavian  and  other,  from 
Odin  to  Walter  Raleigh,^  from  Ulfila*  to  Cranmer,^ 

^  Domingo  de  Guzman  (1170-1221),  a  Spanish  Roman  Catho- 
lic ecclesiastic,  founder  of  the  monastic  order  of  Dominicans,  or 
Preaching  Friars,  —  called  in  England  Black  Friars. 

2  The  Hermits  of  Thebes,  in  Egypt,  living  in  solitude  and  pri- 
vation as  a  religious  obligation. 

3  A  brilliant  and  versatile  adventurer,  explorer,  poet,  and  prose- 
writer  (1552-1618). 

*  See  p.  28,  n.  2. 

s  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  ;  burned  at  the  stake  for  heresy  in 
1556,  under  "Bloody  Mary  "  (Queen  of  England,  1553-1558). 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  165 

enabled  Sliakspeare  to  speak.  Nay  the  j&nislied  Poet, 
I  remark  sometimes,  is  a  symptom  that  his  epoch  itself 
has  reached  perfection  and  is  finished ;  that  before 
long  there  will  be  a  new  epoch,  new  Reformers  needed. 
Doubtless  it  were  finer,  could  we  go  along  always 
in  the  way  of  music;  be  tamed  and  taught  by  our 
Poets,  as  the  rude  creatures  were  by  their  Orpheus  ^ 
of  old.  Or  failing  this  rhythmic  musical  way,  how 
good  were  it  could  we  get  so  much  as  into  the  equable 
way ;  I  mean,  if  j^^aceable  Priests,  reforming  from 
day  to  day,  would  always  suffice  us  !  But  it  is  not  so  ; 
even  this  latter  has  not  yet  been  realised.  Alas,  the 
battling  Reformer  too  is,  from  time  to  time,  a  needful 
and  inevitable  phenomenon.  Obstructions  are  never 
wanting :  the  very  things  that  were  once  indispensable 
furtherances  become  obstructions ;  and  need  to  be 
shaken-off  and  left  behind  us,  —  a  business  often  of 
enormous  difficulty.  It  is  notable  enough,  surely,  how 
a  Theorem  or  spiritual  Representation,  so  we  may  call 
it,  which  once  took-in  the  whole  Universe,  and  was 
completely  satisfactory  in  all  parts  of  it  to  the  highly- 
discursive  acute  intellect  of  Dante,  one  of  the  greatest 
in  the  world,  —  had  in  the  course  of  another  century 
become  dubitable  to  common  intellects ;  become  deni- 
able ;  and  is  now,  to  every  one  of  us,  flatly  incredible, 
obsolete  as  Odiu-s  Theorem !  To  Dante,  human  Exist- 
ence, and  God's  ways  with  men,  were  all  well  repre- 
sented by  those  JIalebolges,  Purgatorios  ;  to  Luther 
not  well.     How  was  this?    Why  coidd   not  Dante's 

^  Whose  skill  in  music  was  so  great,  according  to  the  Greek 
myth,  that  he  charmed  the  wild  animals  and  even  rocks  and 
trees  to  follow  him. 


166  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

Catholicism    continue ;     but    Luther's    Protestantism 
must  needs  follow?    Alas,  nothing  will  continue. 

I  do  not  make  much  of  '  Progress  of  the  Species,' 
as  handled  in  these  times  of  ours ;  nor  do  I  think  you 
would  care  to  hear  much  about  it.  The  talk  on  that 
subject  is  too  often  of  the  most  extravagant,  confused 
sort.  Yet  I  may  say,  the  fact  itself  seems  certain 
enough  ;  nay  we  can  trace-out  the  inevitable  necessity 
of  it  in  the  nature  of  things.  Every  man,  as  I  have 
stated  somewhere,  is  not  only  a  learner  but  a  doer  : 
he  learns  with  the  mind  given  him  what  has  been ; 
but  with  the  same  mind  he  discovers  farther,  he 
invents  and  devises  somewhat  of  his  own.  Absolutely 
without  originality  there  is  no  man.  No  man  what- 
ever believes,  or  can  believe,  exactly  what  his  grand- 
father believed :  he  enlarges  somewhat,  by  fresh  dis- 
covery, his  view  of  the  Universe,  and  consequently  his 
Theorem  of  the  Universe,  —  which  is  an  infinite  Uni- 
verse, and  can  never  be  embraced  wholly  or  finally 
by  any  view  or  Theorem,  in  any  conceivable  enlarge- 
ment :  he  onlarges  somewhat,  I  say ;  finds  somewhat 
that  was  credible  to  his  grandfather  incredible  to  him, 
false  to  him,  inconsistent  with  some  new  thing  he  has 
discovered  or  observed.  It  is  the  history  of  every  man  ; 
and  in  the  history  of  Mankind  we  see  it  summed- 
up  into  great  historical  amounts,  — 'revolutions,  new 
epochs.  Dante's  Mountain  of  Purgatory  ^  does  not 
stand  'in  the.  ocean -of  the  other  HeraisiDhere,'  when 
Columbus  has  once  sailed  thither !  Men  find  no  such 
thing  extant  in  the  other  Hemisphere.    It  is  not  there. 

1  Located  by  the  poet  on  the  other  side  of  the  earth,  exactly 
opposite  Jerusalem. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  167 

It  must  cease  to  be  believed  to  be  there.  So  with  all 
beliefs  whatsoever  in  this  world,  —  all  Systems  of  Be- 
lief, and  Systems  of  Practice  that  spring  from  these. 

If  we  add  now  the  melancholy  fact,  that  when  Be- 
lief waxes  uncertain,  Practice  too  becomes  unsound, 
and  errors,  injustices  and  miseries  everywhei-e  more 
and  more  prevail,  we  shall  see  material  enough  for 
revolution.  At  all  turns,  a  man  who  will  do  faithfully, 
needs  to  believe  firmly.  If  he  have  to  ask  at  every 
turn  the  world's  suffrage ;  if  he  cannot  dispense  with 
the  world's  suffrage,  and  make  his  own  suffrage  serve, 
he  is  a  poor  eye-servant ;  the  work  committed  to  him 
will  be  mlsdone.  Every  such  man  is  a  daily  contrib- 
utor to  the  inevitable  downfall.  Whatsoever  work  he 
does,  dishonestly,  with  an  eye  to  the  outward  look 
of.it,  is  a  new  offence,  parent  of  new  misery  to  some- 
body or  other.  Offences  accumulate  till  they  become 
insupportable ;  and  are  then  violently  burst  through, 
cleared  off  as  by  explosion.  Dante's  sublime  Catholi- 
cism, incredible  now  in  theory,  and  defaced  still  worse 
by  faithless,  doubting  and  dishonest  practice,  has  to  be 
torn  asunder  by  a  Luther ;  Shakspeare's  noble  Feu- 
dalism, as  beautiful  as  it  once  looked  and  was,  has  to 
end  in  a  French  Revolution.  The  accumulation  of 
offences  is,  as  we  say,  too  literally  exploded,  blasted 
asunder  volcanically ;  and  there  are  long  troublous 
periods  before  matters  come  to  a  settlement  again. 

Surely  it  were  mournful  enough  to  look  only  at  this 
face  of  the  matter,  and  find  in  all  human  opinions  and 
ai-rangements  merely  the  fact  that  they  were  uncertain, 
temporary,  subject  to  the  law  of  death  !  At  bottom,  it  is 
not  so :  all  death,  here  too  we  find,  is  but  of  the  body, 


168  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

not  of  the  essence  or  soul;  all  destruction,  by  violent 
revolution  or  howsoever  it  be,  is  but  new  creation  on  a 
wider  scale.  Odinism  was  Valour ;  Christianism  was 
Humility^  a  nobler  kind  of  Valour.  No  thought  that 
ever  dwelt  honestly  as  true  in  the  heart  of  man  but  was 
an  honest  insight  into  God's  truth  on  man's  part,  and 
has  an  essential  truth  in  it  which  endures  through  all 
changes,  an  everlasting  possession  for  us  all.  And,  on 
the  other  hand,  what  a  melancholy  notion  is  that,  which 
has  to  represent  all  men,  in  all  countries  and  times 
except  our  own,  as  having  spent  their  life  in  blind  con- 
demnable  error,  mere  lost  Pagans,  Scandinavians,  Ma- 
hometans, only  that  we  might  have  the  true  ultimate 
knowledge !  All  generations  of  men  were  lost  and 
wrong,  only  that  this  present  little  section  of  a  gen- 
eration might  be  saved  and  right.  They  all  marched 
forward  there,  all  generations  since  the  beginning  of 
the  world,  like  the  Russian  soldiers  into  the  ditch  of 
Schweidnitz  Fort,^  oxAj  to  fill-up  the  ditch  with  their 
dead  bodies,  that  we  might  march-over  and  take  the 
place !  It  is  an  incredible  hj-jjothesis. 

Siich  incredible  hypothesis  we  have  seen  maintained 
with  fierce  emphasis ;  and  this  or  the  other  poor 
individual  man,  with  his  sect  of  individual  men, 
marching  as  over  the  dead  bodies  of  all  men,  towards 
sure  victory :  but  when  he  too,  with  his  hyj^othesis  and 
ultimate  infallible  credo,  sank  into  the  ditch,  and 
became  a  dead  body,  what  was  to  be  said  ?  —  Withal, 

^  In  eastern  Germany.  The  story  of  the  capture  of  the  town 
(1761)  by  the  Allies  (in  the  Seven  Years'  War  of  Frederick  the 
Great  vs.  Austria,  Russia,  France,  Saxony,  and  Sweden)  is  told 
in  Carlyle's  History  of  Friedrich  II,  Book  xx,  viii. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  169 

it  is  an  important  fact  in  the  nature  of  man,  that  he 
tends  to  reckon  his  own  insight  as  final,  and  goes  upon 
it  as  such.  He  will  always  do  it,  I  suppose,  in  one  or 
the  other  way ;  but  it  must  be  in  some  wider,  wiser 
way  than  this.  Are  not  all  true  men  that  live,  or  that 
ever  lived,  soldiers  of  the  same  army,  enlisted,  under 
Heaven's  captaincy,  to  do  battle  against  the  same 
enemy,  the  empire  of  Darkness  and  Wrong?  Why 
should  we  misknow  one  another,  fight  not  against  the 
enemy  but  against  ourselves,  from  mere  difference  oi' 
uniform?  All  uniforms  shall  be  good,  so  they  hold 
in  them  true  valiant  men.  All  fashions  of  arms,  the 
Arab  turban  and  swift  scimetar,  Thor's  strong  hammer 
smiting  down  Jotuns,  shall  be  welcome.  Luther's 
battle-voice,  Dante's  march-melody,  all  genuine  things 
are  with  us,  not  against  us.  We  are  all  under  one 
Captain,  soldiers  of  the  same  host.  —  Let  us  now  look 
a  little  at  this  Luther's  fighting ;  what  kind  of  battle 
it  was,  and  how  he  comported  himself  in  it.  Luther 
too  was  of  our  spiritual  Heroes ;  a  Prophet  to  his 
country  and  time. 

As  introductory  to  the  whole*  a  remark  about  Idola- 
try will  perhaps  be  in  place  here.  One  of  Mahomet's 
characteristics,  which  indeed  belongs  to  all  Prophets, 
is  unlimited  implacable  zeal  against  Idolatry.  It  is  the 
grand  theme  of  Prophets :  Idolatry,  the  worshipping 
of  dead  Idols  as  the  Divinity,  is  a  thing  they  cannot 
away-with,  ^  but    have    to    denounce  continually,  and 

^  Bring  no  more  vain  oblations  ;  incense  is  an  abomination 
uuto  me;  the  new  moons  and  sabbaths;  the  calling  of  assemblies, 
I  cannot  away  with.    Isaiah  i,  13. 


170  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

brand  with  inexpiable  reprobation  ;  it  is  the  chief  of 
all  the  sins  they  see  clone  under  the  sun.^  This  is 
worth  noting.  We  will  not  enter  here  into  the  theo- 
logical question  about  Idolatry.  Idol  is  Eidolon^  a 
thing  seen,  a  symbol.  It  is  not  God,  but  a  Symbol  of 
God ;  and  perhaps  one  may  question  whether  any 
the  most  benighted  mortal  ever  took  it  for  more  than 
a  Symbol.  I  fancy,  he  did  not  think  that  the  poor 
image  his  own  hands  had  made  was^  God ;  but  that 
God  was  emblemed  by  it,  that  God  was  in  it  some 
way  or  other.  And  now  in  this  sense,  one  may  ask,  Is 
not  all  worship  whatsoever  a  worship  by  Symbols,  by 
eidola,  or  things  seen  ?  "Whether  seen,  rendered  \asible 
ais  an  image  or  picture  to  the  bodily  eye  :  or  visible 
only  to  the  inward  eye,  to  the  imagination,  to  the 
intellect :  this  makes  a  superficial,  but  no  substantial 
difference.  It  is  still  a  Thing  Seen,  significant  of 
Godhead ;  an  Idol.  The  most  rigorous  Puritan  has 
his  Confession  of  Faith,  and  intellectual  Representa- 
tion of  Divine  things,  and  worships  thereby ;  thereby 
is  worship  first  made  possible  for  him.  All  creeds, 
liturgies,  religious  forms,  conceptions  that  fitly  invest 
religious  feelings,  are  in  this  sense  eidola,  things  seen. 
All  worship  whatsoever  must  proceed  by  Symbols,  by 
Idols  :  —  we  may  say,  all  Idolatry  is  comparative,  and 
the  worst  Idolatry  is  only  more  idolatrous. 

Where,  then,  lies  the  evil  of  it  ?  Some  fatal  evil 
must  lie  in  it,  or  earnest  prophetic  men  would  not  on 
all  hands  so  reprobate  it.  Why  is  Idolatry  so  hateful 
to  Prophets  ?    It  seems  to  me  as  if,  in  the  worship  of 

^  I  have  seen  all  the  works  that  are  doue  under  the  sun  ;  and, 
behold,  all  is  vanity  and  vexation  of  spirit.    Eccles.  i,  14. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST         '  171 

those  poor  wooden  symbols,  the  thing  that  had  chiefly 
provoked  the  Prophet,  and  filled  his  inmost  soul  with 
indignation  and  aversion,  was  not  exactly  what  sug- 
gested itself  to  his  own  thought,  and  came  out  of  him 
in  words  to  others,  as  the  thing.  The  rudest  heathen 
that  worshipped  Canopus,  or  the  Caabah  Black-Stone, 
he,  as  we  saw,  was  superior  to  the  horse  that  worshipped 
nothing  at  all !  Nay  there  was  a  kind  of  lasting  merit 
in  that  poor  act  of  his  ;  analogous  to  what  is  still  meri- 
torious in  Poets :  recognition  of  a  certain  endless  divine 
beauty  and  significance  in  stars  and  all  natural  objects 
whatsoever.  Why  should  the  Prophet  so  mercilessly 
condemn  him?  The  poorest  mortal  worshipping  his 
Petish,^  while  his  heart  is  full  of  it,  may  be  an  object 
of  pity,  of  contempt  and  avoidance,  if  you  will ;  but 
cannot  sm^ely  be  an  object  of  hatred.  Let  his  heart  be 
honestly  full  of  it,  the  whole  space  of  his  dark  narrow 
mind  illuminated  thereby ;  in  one  word,  let  him  en- 
tirely believe  in  his  Fetish,  —  it  will  then  be,  I  should 
say,  if  not  well  with  him,  yet  as  well  as  it  can  readily 
be  made  to  be,  and  j'ou  will  leave  him  alone,  unmo- 
lested there. 

But  here  enters  the  fatal  circumstance  of  Idolatry, 
that,  in  the  era  of  the  Prophets,  no  man's  mind  is  any 
longer  honestly  filled  with  his  Idol  or  Symbol.  Before 
the  Prophet  can  arise  who,  seeing  through  it,  knows  it 
to  be  mere  wood,  many  men  must  have  begun  dimly  to 
doubt  that  it  was  little  more.  Condemnable  Idolatry 
is  insincei^e  Idolatry.  Doubt  has  eaten-out  the  heart 
of  it :  a  human  soul  is  seen  clinging  spasmodically  to 

^  Any  object  worshipped  or  feared  as  possessing  mysterious 
or  supernatural  powers. 


172  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

• 

an  Ark  of  the  Covenant,  wliich  it  half-feels  now  to 
have  become  a  Phantasm.  This  is  one  of  the  balefulest 
sights.  Souls  are  no  longer  filled  with  their  Fetish ; 
but  only  pretend  to  be  filled,  and  would  fain  make 
themselves  feel  that  they  are  filled.  "  You  do  not  be- 
lieve," said  Coleridge ;  "  you  only  believe  that  you 
believe."  It  is  the  final  scene  in  all  kinds  of  Worship 
and  -Symbolism  ;  the  sure  symptom  that  death  is  now 
nigh.  It  is  equivalent  to  what  we  call  Formulism,  and 
Worship  of  Formulas,  in  these  days  of  ours.  No  more 
immoral  act  can  be  done  by  a  human  creature ;  for  it 
is  the  beginning  of  all  immorality,  or  rather  it  is  the 
impossibility  henceforth  of  any  morality  whatsoever : 
the  innermost  moral  soul  is  paralysed  thereby,  cast  into 
fatal  magnetic  sleep !  Men  are  no  longer  sincere  men. 
I  do  not  wonder  that  the  earnest  man  denounces  this, 
brands  it,  prosecutes  it  with  inextinguishable  aversion. 
He  and  it*,  aU  good  and  it,  are  at  death-feud.  Blam- 
able  Idolatry  is  Cant,  and  even  what  one  may  call  Sin- 
cere-Cant. Sincere-Cant :  that  is  worth  thinking  of ! 
Every  sort  of  Worship  ends  with  this  phasis. 

I  find  Luther  to  have  been  a  Breaker  of  Idols,  no 
less  than  any  other  Prophet.  The  wooden  gods  of  the 
Koreish,  made  of  timber  and  bees-wax,  were  not  more 
hateful  to  Mahomet  than  Tetzel's  ^  Pardons  of  Sin, 
made  of  sheepskin  and  ink,  were  to  Luther,  It  is  the 
property  of  every  Hero,  in  every  time,  in  every  place 

-  A  Dominican  preacher  (1455-1519),  who  was  so  (financially) 
efficient  a  seller  of  indulgences  that  he  was  employed  in  that' 
capacity  by  the  Pope  almost  continuously  from  1502  to  1518. 
His  personal  morals  were  by  no  means  above  reproacli.  He  was 
suspended  in  1518.  The  Council  of  Trent  repudiated  the  prin- 
ciple of  selling  indulgences.    See  p.  31,  n.  2. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  173 

and  situation,  that  he  come  back  t©  reality ;  that  he 
stand  upon  things,  and  not  shows  of  things.  Accord- 
ing as  he  loves,  and  venerates,  articulately  or  with  deep 
speechless  thought,  the  awful  realities  of  things,  so  will 
the  hollow  shows  of  things,  however  regidar,  decorous, 
accredited  by  Koreishes  or  Conclaves,  be  intolerable 
and  detestable  to  him.  Protestantism  too  is  the  work 
of  a  Prophet :  the  prophet-work  of  that  sixteenth 
century.  The  first  stroke  of  honest  demolition  to  an 
ancient  thing  grown  false  and  idolatrous  ;  preparatory 
afar  »&.  to  a  new  thing,  which  shall  be  true,  and 
authentically  divine  !  — 

At  first  view  it  might  seem  as  if  Protestantism  were 
entirely  destructive  to  this  that  we  call  Hero-worship, 
and  represent  as  the  basis  of  all  possible  good,  religious 
or  social,  for  mankind.  One  often  hears  it  said  that 
Protestantism  introduced  a  new  era,  radically  different 
from  any  the  world  had  ever  seen  before :  the  era  of 
'private  judgment,'  as  they  call  it.  By  this  revolt 
against  the  Pope,  every  man  became  his  own  Pope ; 
and  learnt,  among  other  things,  that  he  must  never 
trust  any  Pope,  or  spiritual  Hero-captain,  any  more  ! 
Whereby,  is  not  spiritual  union,  all  hierarchy  and 
subordination  among  men,  henceforth  an  impossibility  ? 
So  we  hear  it  said.  —  Now  I  need  not  deny  that  Pi'o- 
testantism  was  a  revolt  against  spiritual  sovereignties, 
Popes  and  much  else.  Nay  I  will  grant  that  English 
Puritanism,  revolt  against  earthly  sovereignties,  was 
the  second  act  of  it ;  that  the  enormous  French  Revo- 
lution itself  was  the  third  act,  whereby  all  sovereignties 
earthly  and  spiritual  were,  as  might  seem,  abolished 
or  made  sure  of  abolition.    Protestantism  is  the  q:rand 


174  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

root  from  wliicli  our  whole  subsequent  European  His- 
tory branches  out.  For  the  spiritual  will  always  body 
itself  forth  in  the  temporal  history  of  men  ;  the  sj)irit- 
ual  is  the  beginning  of  the  temporal.  And  now,  sure 
enough,  the  cry  is  everywhere  for  Liberty  and  Equality, 
Independence  and  so  forth  ;  instead  of  Kings^  Ballot- 
boxes  and  Electoral  suffrages  :  it  seems  made  out  that 
any  Hero-sovereign,  or  loyal  obedience  of  men  to  a 
man,  in  things  temporal  or  things  spiritual,  has  passed 
away  forever  from  the  world.  I  shoiild  despair  of 
the  world  altogether,  if  so.  One  of  my  deeped  con- 
victions is,  that  it  is  not  so.  Without  sovereigns,  true 
sovereigns,  temporal  and  spiritual,  I  see  nothing  possi- 
ble but  an  anarchy ;  the  hatef ulest  of  things.  But  I 
find  Protestantism,  whatever  anarchic  democracy  it 
have  produced,  to  be  the  beginning  of  new  genuine 
sovereignty  and  order.  I  find  it  to  be  a  revolt  against 
false  sovereigns  ;  the  painful  but  indispensable  first 
preparative  for  true  sovereigns  getting  place  among 
us  I    This  is  worth  explaining  a  little. 

Let  us  remark,  therefore,  in  the  first  place,  that 
this  of  '  private  judgment '  is,  at  bottom,  not  a  new 
thing  in  the  world,  but  only  new  at  that  epoch  of  the 
world.  There  is  nothing  generically  new  or  peculiar 
in  the  Keformation  ;  it  was  a  return  to  Truth  and 
Reality  in  oi3position  to  Falsehood  and  Semblance,  as 
all  kinds  of  Improvement  and  genuine  Teaching  are 
and  have  been.  Liberty  of  private  judgment,  if  we 
will  consider  it,  must  at  all  times  have  existed  in  the 
world.  Dante  had  not  put-out  his  eyes,  or  tied  shackles 
on  himself  ;  he  was  at  home  in  that  Catholicism  of 
his,  a  free-seeing  soul  in  it,  —  if  many  a  poor  Hog- 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  175 

straten,^  Tetzel  and  Dr.  Eck  ^  had  now  become  slaves 
in  it.  Liberty  of  judgment  ?  No  iron  chain,  or  out- 
ward force  of  any  kind,  could  ever  compel  the  soul  of 
a  man  to  believe  or  to  disbelieve  :  it  is  his  own  inde- 
feasible light,  that  judgment  of  his  ;  he  will  reign, 
and  believe  there,  by  the  grace  of  God  alone  !  The 
sorriest  sophistical  Bellarmine,^  preaching  sightless 
faith  and  passive  obedience,  must  first,  by  some  kind 
of  conviction,  have  abdicated  his  right  to  be  convmced. 
His  '  private  judgment '  indicated  that,  as  the  ad  vis- 
ablest  step  he  could  take.  The  right  of  jDrivate  judg- 
ment will  subsist,  in  full  force,  wherever  true  men 
subsist.  A  true  man  believes  with  his  whole  judgment, 
with  all  the  illumination  and  discei"nment  that  is  in 
him,  and  has  always  so  believed.  A  false  man,  only 
struggling  to  'believe  that  he  believes,'  will  naturally 
manage  it  in  some  other  way.  Protestantism  said  to 
this  latter.  Woe !  and  to  the  former.  Well  done !  At 
bottom,  it  was  no  new  saying  ;  it  was  a  return  to  all 
old  sayings  that  ever  had  been  said.  Be  genuine,  be 
sincere  :  that  was,  once  more,  the  meaning  of  it.  Ma- 
homet believed  with  his  whole  mind  ;  Odin  with  his 
whole  mind,  —  he,  and  all  true  Followers  of  Odinism. 
They,  by  their  private  judgment,  had  '  judged  '  —  so. 
And  now  I  venture  to  assert,  that  the  exercise  of 
private  judgment,  faithfully  gone  about,  does  by  no 
means  necessarily  end  in  selfish  independence,  isola- 

^  Hogstraten  or  (Hoogstraten),  a  Dominican  monk,  and  Eck, 
a  professor  of  theology,  both  contemporaries  of  Luther,  were 
enthusiastic  haters  of  him  and  his  doctrines. 

2  Cardinal,  Archbishop,  Librarian  of  the  Vatican  (1542-1621); 
a  zealous  champion  of  Roman  Catholic  orthodoxy.  • 


176  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

tion  ;  but  rather  ends  necessarily  in  the  opjjosite  of 
that.  It  is  not  honest  inquiry  that  makes  anarchy  ; 
but  it  is  error,  insincerity,  half-behef  and  untruth  that 
make  it.  A  man  protesting  against  error  is  on  the 
way  towards  uniting  himself  with  all  men  that  believe 
in  truth.  There  is  no  communion  possible  among  men 
wltD  beheve  only  in  hearsays.  The  heart  of  each  is 
lying  dead  ;  has  no  power  of  sympathy  even  with 
things,  —  or  he  would  believe  thcjn  and  not  hearsays. 
No  sympathy  even  with  things;  how  much  less  with 
his  feUow-men !  He  cannot  unite  with  men  ;  he  is  an 
anarchic  man.  Only  in  a  world  of  sincere  men  is  unity 
possible ;  —  and  there,  in  the  loagrun,  it  is  as  good  as 
certain. 

For  observe  one  thing,  a  thing  too  often  left  out  of 
view,  or  rather  altogether  lost  sight  of,  in  this  contro- 
versy :  That  it  is  not  necessary  a  man  should  himself 
have  discovered  the  truth  he  is  to  believe  in,  and  never 
so  sincerely  to  believe  in.  A  Great  Man,  we  said,  was 
always  sincere,  as  the  first  condition  of  him.  But  a 
man  need  not  be  great  in  order  to  be  sincere ;  that  is 
not  the  necessity  of  Nature  and  all  Time,  but  only  of 
certain  corrupt  unfortunate  epochs  of  Time.  A  man 
can  believe,  and  make  his  own,  in  the  most  genuine 
way,  what  he  has  received  from  another ;  —  and  with 
boundless  gratitude  to  that  other !  The  merit  of  oi-i- 
ginality  is  not  novelty  ;  it  is  sincerity.  The  believing 
man  is  the  original  man ;  whatsoever  he  believes,  he 
believes  it  for  himself,  not  for  another.  Every  son  of 
Adam  can  become  a  sincere  man,  an  original  man,  in 
this  sense  ;  no  mortal  is  doomed  to  be  an  insincere 
man.    Whole  ages,  what  we  call  ages  of  Faith,  are  ori- 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  177 

ginal ;  all  men  in  them,  or  the  most  of  men  in  them, 
sincere.  These  are  the  great  and  fruitful  ages:  every 
worker,  in  all  spheres,  is  a  worker  not  on  semblance 
but  on  substance  ;  every  work  issues  in  a  result :  the 
general  sum  of  such  work  is  great ;  for  all  of  it,  as 
genuine,  tends  towards  one  goal ;  all  of  it  is  additive, 
none  of  it  subtractive.  There  is  true  union,  true  king- 
ship, loyalty,  all  true  and  blessed  things,  so  far  as  the 
poor  Earth  can  produce  blessedness  for  men. 

Hero-worship?  Ah  me,  that  a  man  be  self-subsistent, 
original,  true,  or  what  we  call  it,  is  surely  the  farthest 
in  the  world  from  indisposing  him  to  revei'ence  and 
believe  other  men's  truth !  It  only  disposes,  necessi- 
tates and  invincibly  compels  him  to  Ji^believe  other 
men's  dead  formulas,  hearsays  and  untruths.  A  man 
embraces  truth  with  his  eyes  open,  and  because  his 
eyes  are  open :  does  he  need  to  shut  them  before  he 
can  love  his  Teacher  of  truth  ?  He  alone  can  love,  with 
a  right  gratitude  and  genuine  loyalty  of  soul,  the 
Hero-Teacher  who  has  delivered  him  out  of  darkness 
into  light.  Is  not  such  a  one  a  true  Hero  and  Serpent- 
queller  ;  worthy  of  all  reverence !  The  black  monster, 
Falsehood,  our  one  enemy  in  this  world,  lies  prostrate 
by  his  valour ;  it  was  he  that  conquered  the  world  for 
us  !  —  See,  accordingly,  was  not  Luther  himself  rev- 
erenced as  a  true  Pope,  or  Spiritual  Father,  bei7ig 
verily  such?  Napoleon,  from  amid  boundless  revolt  of 
Sansculottism,  ^  became  a  King.  Hero-worship  never 
dies,  nor  can  die.  Loyalty  and  Sovereignty  are  ever- 
lasting in  the  world  :  —  and  there  is  this  in  them,  that 
they  are  grounded  not  on  garnitures  and  semblances, 
1  See  p.  275,  n.  1. 


178  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

but  on  realities  and  sincerities.  Not  by  shutting  your 
eyes,  your  '  private  judgment ; '  no,  but  by  opening 
them,  and  by  having  something  to  see !  Luther's  mes- 
sage was  deposition  and  abolition  to  all  false  Popes  and 
Potentates,  but  life  and  strength,  though  afar  off,  to 
new  genuine  ones. 

All  this  of  Liberty  and  Equality,  Electoral  suf- 
frages. Independence  and  so  forth,  we  will  take,  there- 
fore, to  be  a  temporary  phenomenon,  by  no  means  a 
final  one.  Though  likely  to  last  a  long  time,  with,  sad 
enough  embroilments  for  us  all,  we  must  welcome  it, 
as  the  penalty  of  sins  that  are  past,  the  pledge  of 
inestimable  benefits  that  are  coming.  In  aU  ways,  it 
behoved  men  to  quit  simulacra  and  return  to  fact ; 
cost  what  it  might,  that  did  behove  to  be  done.  With 
spurious  Popes,  and  Believers  having  no  private  judg- 
ment,—  quacks  pretending  to  command  over  dupes, 

—  what  can  you  do  ?  Misery  and  mischief  only.  You 
cannot  make  an  association  out  of  insincere  men  ;  you 
cannot  build  an  edifice  except  by  plummet  and  level, 

—  at  7'i</7i/-angles  to  one  another !  In  all  this  wild 
revolutionary  work,  from  Protestantism  downwards,  I 
see  the  blessedest  result  preparing  itseK  :  not  aboli- 
tion of  Hero-worship,  but  rather  what  I  would  call  a 
whole  World  of  Heroes.  If  Hero  mean  sincere  man, 
why  may  not  every  one  of  us  be  a  Hero  ?  A  world 
all  sincere,  a  believing  world :  the  like  has  been  ;  the 
like  will  again  be,  —  cannot  help  being.  That  were 
the  right  sort  of  Worshippers  for  Heroes :  never  could 
the  truly  Better  be  so  reverenced  as  where  all  were 
True  and  Good !  —  But  we  must  hasten  to  Luther 
and  his  Life. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  179 

Luther's  birthplace  was  Eisleben  ^  in  Saxony ;  he 
came  into  the  world  there  on  the  10th  of  November 
1483.  It  was  an  accident  that  gave  this  honour  to 
Eisleben.  His  parents,  poor  mine-labourers  in  a  vil- 
lage of  that  region,  named  Mohra,  had  gone  to  the 
Eisleben  Winter-Fair  :  in  the  tumult  of  this  scene 
the  Frau  Luther  was  taken  with  travail,  found  refuge 
in  some  poor  house  there,  and  the  boy  she  bore  was 
named  Martin  Luther.  Strange  enough  to  reflect 
upon  it.  This  poor  Frau  Luther,  she  had  gone  with 
her  husband  to  make  her  small  merchandisings ;  per- 
haps to  sell  the  lock  of  yarn  she  had  been  spinning, 
to  buy  the  small  winter-necessaries  for  her  narrow 
hut  or  household ;  in  the  whole  world,  that  day,  there 
was  not  a  more  entirely  unimportant-looking  pair  of 
people  than  this  Miner  and  his  Wife.  And  yet  what 
were  all  Emperors,  Popes  and  Potentates,  in  compari- 
son ?  There  was  born  here,  once  more,  a  Mighty 
Man ;  whose  light  was  to  flame  as  the  beacon  over 
long  centuries  and  epochs  of  the  world  ;  the  whole 
world  and  its  histoiy  was  waiting  for  this  man.  It 
is  strange,  it  is  great.  It  leads  us  back  to  another 
Birth-hour,  in  a  still  meaner  environment,  Eighteen 
Plundred  years  ago,  —  of  which  it  is  fit  that  we  say 
nothing,  that  we  thmk  only  in  silence ;  for  what 
words  are  there !  The  Age  of  Miracles  past  ?  The 
Age  of  Miracles  is  forever  here  I  — 

I  find  it  altogether  suitable  to  Luther's  function  irr, 

this  Earth,  and  doubtless  wisely  ordered  to  that  end 

by  the  Providence  presiding  over  him  and  us  and  all 

things,  that  he  was  born  poor,  and  brought-up  poor, 

1  Thirty-nine  miles  about  WNW  of  Leipzig. 


180  LECTURES   ON   HEROES 

one  of  tlie  poorest  of  men.  He  had  to  beg,  as  the 
school-children  in  those  times  did  ;  singing  for  ahns 
and  bread,  from  door  to  door.  Hardship,  rigorous 
Necessity  was  the  poor  boy's  companion ;  no  man  nor 
no  thing  would  put-on  a  false  face  to  flatter  Martin 
Luther.  Among  things,  not  among  the  shows  of 
things,  had  he  to  grow.  A  boy  of  rude  figure,  yet 
with  weak  health,  with  his  large  greedy  soul,  fidl  of 
all  faculty  and  sensibility,  he  suffered  greatly.  But 
it  was  his  task  to  get  acquainted  with  realities,  and 
keep  acquainted  with  them,  at  whatever  cost :  his 
task  was  to  bring  the  whole  world  back  to  reality',  for 
it  had  dwelt  too  long  with  semblance !  A  youth 
nursed-up  in  wintry  whirlwinds,  in  desolate  darkness 
and  difficulty,  that  he  may  step-forth  at  last  from  his 
stormy  Scandinavia,  strong  as  a  true  man,  as  a  god : 
a  Christian  Odin,  —  a  right  Thor  once  more,  with  his 
thunder-hannner,  to  smite  asimder  ugly  enough  Jotuns 
and  Giant-monsters  ! 

Perhaps  the  turning  incident  of  his  life,  we  may 
fancy,  was  that  death  of  his  friend  Alexis,  by  light- 
ning, at  the  gate  of  Erfurt.  Luther  had  struggled-up 
through  boyhood,  better  and  worse ;  displajdng,  in 
spite  of  all  hindrances,  the  largest  intellect,  eager  to 
learn  :  his  father  judging  doubtless  that  he  might 
promote  himself  in  the  world,  set  him  upon  the  study 
of  Law.  This  was  the  path  to  rise  ;  Luther,  with  lit- 
tle will  in  it  either  way,  had  consented  :  he  was  now 
nineteen  years  of  age.  Alexis  and  he  had  been  to  see 
the  old  Lutlier  people  at  Mansfeldt ;  ^  were  got  back 

^  Where  Luther's  father  had  become  a  member  of  the  town 
council. 


I 


I 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  181 

again  near  Erfnrt,^  when  a  thunderstorm  came  on  ; 
the  bolt  struck  Alexis,  he  fell  dead  at  Luther's  feet. 
What  is  this  Life  of  ours  ?  —  gone  in  a  moment, 
burnt-up  like  a  scroll,  into  the  blank  Eternity !  What 
are  all  earthly  preferments,  Chancellorships,  King- 
ships ?  They  lie  shrunk  together  —  there  !  The  Earth 
has  opened  on  them  ;  in  a  moment  they  are  not,  and 
Eternity  is.  Luther,  struck  to  the  heart,  determined 
to  devote  himself  to  God  and  God's  service  alone.  In 
spite  of  all  dissuasions  from  his  father  and  others,  he 
became  a  Monk  ^  in  the  Augustine  Convent  at  Erfurt. 
This  was  probably  the  first  light-point  in  the  history 
of  Luther,  his  purer  will  now  first  decisively  uttering 
itself ;  but,  for  the  present,  it  was  still  as  one  light- 
point  in  an  element  all  of  darkness.  He  says  he  was 
a  pious  monk,  ich  bin  ein  fronvuer  3I'6nch  geivesen ; 
faithfully,  painfully  struggling  to  work-out  the  truth 
of  this  high  act  of  his  ;  but  it  was  to  little  purpose. 
His  misery  had  not  lessened ;  had  rather,  as  it  were, 
increased  into  infinitude.  The  drudgeries  he  had  to 
do,  as  novice  in  his  Convent,  all  sorts  of  slave-work, 
were  not  his  grievance :  the  deep  earnest  soul  of  the 
man  had  fallen  into  all  manner  of  black  scruples,  dubi- 
tations ;  he  believed  himself  likely  to  die  soon,  and 
far  worse  than  die.  One  hears  with  a  new  interest  for 
poor  Luther  that,  at  this  time,  he  lived  in  terror  of  the 
unspeakable  misery.;  fancied  that  he  was  doomed  to 
eternal  reprobation.  Was  it  not  the  humble  sincere 
nature  of  the  man  ?  What  was  he,  that  he  should  be 
raised  to  Heaven !    He  that  had  known  only  misery, 

1  Where  Luther  had  entered  the  university  in  1501. 

2  1505. 


182  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

and  mean  slavery  :  the  news  was  too  blessed  to  be 
credible.  It  could  not  become  clear  to  him  how,  by 
fasts,  vigils,  formalities  and  mass-work,  a  man's  soul 
could  be  saved.  He  fell  into  the  blackest  wretchedness ; 
had  to  wander  staggering  as  on  the  verge  of  bottomless 
Despair. 

It  must  have  been  a  most  blessed  discovery,  that  of 
an  old  Latin  Bible  which  he  found  in  the  Erfurt 
Library  about  this  time.  He  had  never  seen  the  Book 
before.^  It  taught  him  another  lesson  than  that  of 
fasts  and  vigils.  A  brother  monk  too,  of  pious  experi- 
ence, was  helpful.  Luther  learned  now  that  a  man  was 
saved  not  by  singing  masses,  but  by  the  infinite  grace 
of  God:  a  more  credible  hypothesis.  He  gradually 
got  himself  founded,  as  on  the  rock.  No  wonder  he 
should  venerate  the  Bible,  which  had  brought  this 
blessed  help  to  him.  He  prized  it  as  the  Word  of  the 
Highest  must  be  prized  by  such  a  man.  He  determined 
to  hold  by  that ;  as  through  life  and  to  death  he  firmly 
did. 

This,  then,  is  his  deliverance  from  darkness,  his  final 
triumph  over  darkness,  what  we  call  his  conversion ; 
for  himself  the  most  important  of  all  epochs.  That  he 
should  now  grow  daily  in  peace  and  clearness ;  that, 
unfolding  now  the  great  talents  and  virtues  implanted 
in  him,  he  should  rise  to  importance  in  his  Convent, 
in  his  country,  and  be  found  more  and  more  useful  in 
all  honest  business  of  life,  is  a  natural  result.    He  was 

^  Luther  had  followed  the  usual  university  course  with  the  study 
of  law  (see  p.  180).  Outside  the  ranks  of  teachers  and  students 
of  theology,  the  Bible  was  much  less  known  than  the  Church 
Fathers,  who  were  considered  of  equal,  if  not  greater,  authority 
and  importance. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  183 

sent  on  missions  by  his  Augustine  Order,  as  a  man  of 
talent  and  fidelity  fit  to  do  their  business  well :  the 
Elector  of  Saxony,  Friedrich,  named  the  Wise,  a  truly 
wise  and  just  prmce,  had  cast  his  eye  on  him  as  a  val- 
uable person  ;  made  him  Professor  in  his  new  Uni- 
versity of  Wittenberg,!  Preacher  too  at  Wittenberg ; 
in  both  which  capacities,  as  in  all  duties  he  did,  this 
Luther,  in  the  peaceable  sphere  of  common  life,  was 
gaining  more  and  more  esteem  with  all  good  men. 

It  was  in  his  twenty-seventh  year  that  he  first  saw 
Rome ;  being  sent  thither,  as  I  said,  on  mission  from 
his  Convent.  Pope  Julius  the  Second,  and  what  was 
going-on  at  Rome,  must  have  filled  the  mind  of  Luther 
with  amazement.  He  had  come  as  to  the  Sacred  City, 
throne  of  God's  Highpriest  on  Earth ;  and  he  found 
it  —  what  we  laiow !  ^  Many  thoughts  it  must  have 
given  the  man ;  many  which  we  have  no  record  of, 
which  perhaps  he  did  not  himself  know  how  to  utter. 
This  Rome,  this  scene  of  false  priests,  clothed  not  in 
the  beauty  of  holiness,  but  in  far  other  vesture,  is 
false :  but  what  is  it  to  Luther  ?  A  mean  man  he, 
how  shall  he  reform  a  world  ?  That  was  far  from  his 
thoughts.  A  humble,  solitary  man,  why  should  he  at 
all  meddle  with  the  world?  It  was  the  task  of  quite 
higher  men  than  he.  His  business  was  to  guide  his 
own  footsteps  wisely  thi'ough  the  world.  Let  him  do 
his  own  obscure  duty  in  it  well ;  the  rest,  horrible  and 
dismal  as  it  looks,  is  in  God's  hand,  not  in  his. 

^  Founded  1502.  Shakespeare's  Hamlet  and  Horatio  were 
Wittenberg  students. 

2  Unequaled  in  all  Europe  for  every  sort  of  debauchery  and 
corruption. 


184  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

It  is  curious  to  reflect  what  might  have  been  the 
issue,  had  Kouian  Popery  happened  to  pass  this 
Luther  by ;  to  go  on  in  its  great  wasteful  orbit,  and 
not  come  athwart  his  little  path,  and  force  him  to 
assault  it !  Conceivable  enough  that,  in  this  case,  he 
might  have  held  his  peace  about  the  abuses  of  Rome ; 
left  Providence,  and  God  on  high,  to  deal  with  them ! 
A  modest  quiet  man ;  not  prompt  he  to  attack 
irreverently  persons  in  authority.  His  clear  task,  as  I 
say,  was  to  do  his  own  duty ;  to  walk  wisely  in  this 
world  of  confused  wickedness,  and  save  his  own  soul 
alive.  But  the  Roman  Highpriesthood  did  come 
athwart  him :  afar  off  at  Wittenberg  he,  Luther, 
could  not  get  lived  ^  in  honesty  for  it ;  he  remon- 
strated, resisted,  came  to  extremity ;  was  struck-at, 
struck  again,  and  so  it  came  to  wager  of  battle  be- 
tween them !  This  is  worth  attending  to  in  Luther's 
history.  Perhaps  no  man  of  so  hmnble,  peaceable  a 
disposition  ever  filled  the  world  with  contention. 
We  cannot  but  see  that  he  would  have  loved  privacy, 
quiet  diligence  in  the  shade ;  that  it  was  against  his 
will  he  ever  became  a  notoriety.  Notoriety :  what 
would  that  do  for  liim?  The  goal  of  his  march 
through  this  world  was  the  Infinite  Heaven ;  an 
indubitable  goal  for  him :  in  a  few  years,  he  should 
either  have  attained  that,  or  lost  it  forever !  We  will 
say  nothing  at  all,  I  think,  of  that  sorrowfulest  of 
theories,  of  its  being  sonie  mean  shopkeeper  grudge,  of 
the  Augustine  Monk  against  the  Dominican,  that  first 
kindled  the  wrath  of  Luther,  and  produced  the  Pro- 

^  The  idiom  is  more  familiar  in  "get  killed,"  "get  lost,"  etc. 
See  p.  326,  —  "  could  not  get  resigned." 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  185 

testant  Reformation.  We  will  say  to  the  people  who 
maintain  it,  if  indeed  any  such  exist  now:  Get  first 
into  the  sphere  of  thought  by  which  it  is  so  much  as 
possible  to  judge  of  Luther,  or  of  any  man  like 
Luther,  otherwise  than  distractedly ;  we  may  then 
begin  arguing'  with  you. 

The  Monk  Tetzel,  sent  out  carelessly  in  the  way  of 
trade,  by  Leo  Tenth,i  —  who  merely  wanted  to  raise 
a  little  money,  and  for  the  rest  seems  to  have  been  a 
Pagan  rather  than  a  Christian,  so  far  as  he  was  any- 
thing, —  arrived  at  Wittenberg,  and  drove  his  scandal- 
ous ti'ade  there.  Luther's  flock  bought  Indulgences ; 
in  the  confessional  of  his  church,  people  pleaded  to 
him  that  they  had  already  got  their  sins  pardoned. 
Luther,  if  he  would  not  be  found  wanting  at  liis  own 
post,  a  false  sluggard  and  coward  at  the  very  .centre  of 
the  little  space  of  ground  that  was  his  own  and  no 
other  man's,  had  to  step-forth  against  Indulgences, 
and  declare  aloud  that  they  were  a  futility  and  sorrow- 
ful mockery,  that  no  man's  sins  could  be  pardoned  by 
them.  It  was  the  beginning  of  the  whole  Reforma- 
tion. We  know  how  it  went ;  forward  from  this  first 
public  challenge  ^  of  Tetzel,  on  the  last  day  of  October 
1517,  through  remonstrance  and  argument;  —  spread- 
ing ever  wider,  rising  ever  higher ;  till  it  became 
unquenchable,  and  enveloped  all  the  world.    Luther's 

^  Born  1475,  made  Cardinal  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  Pope  in 
1513,  and  died  1521.  He  was  the  son  of  Lorenzo  de'  Medici 
"  The  Magnificent,"  and  a  liberal  patron  of  art  and  letters.- 

^  The  ninetj-five  "theses"  or  statements,  opposing  indul- 
gences, nailed  to  the  door  of  the  Castle  Church  in  Wittenberg. 
The  Elector  of  Saxouy  sided  with  Luther,  and  refused  Tetzel 
permission  to  enter  his  domain. 


186  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

heart' s-desire  was  to  have  this  grief  and  other  griefs 
amended ;  his  thought  was  still  far  other  than  that  of 
introducing  separation  in  the  Church,  or  revolting 
against  the  Pope,  Father  of  Christendom.  —  The 
elegant  Pagan  Pope  cared  little  about  this  Monk  and 
his  doctrines ;  wished,  however,  to  have  done  with  the 
noise  of  him :  in  a  space  of  some  three  years,  having 
tried  various  softer  methods,  he  thought  good  to  end 
it  hy  fire.  He  dooms  the  Monk's  writings  to  be  burnt 
by  the  hangman,  and  his  body  to  be  sent  bound  to 
Rome,  —  probably  for  a  similar  purpose.  It  was  the 
way  they  had  ended  with  Huss,^  with  Jerome,^  the 
century  before.  A  short  argument,  fire.  Poor  Huss : 
he  came  to  that  Constance  Comicil,^  with  all  imagin- 
able promises  and  safe-conducts ;  an  earnest,  not  rebel- 
lious kind  of  man :  they  laid  him  instantly  in  a  stone 
dungeon  '  tlu'ee-feet  wide,  six-feet  high,  seven-feet 
long  ; '  hurnt  the  true  voice  of  him  out  of  this  world  ; 
choked  it  in  smoke  and  fire.  That  was  not  well 
done ! 

I,  for  one,  pardon  Luther  for  now  altogether  revolt- 
ing against  the  Pope.  The  elegant  Pagan,  by  this  fire- 
decree  of  his,  had  kindled  into  noble  just  wrath  the 
bravest  heart  then  living  in  this  world.  The  bravest, 
if  also  one  of  the  humblest,  peaceablest ;  it  was  now 
kindled.  These  words  of  mine,  words  of  truth  and 
soberness,  aiming  faithfully,  as  human  inability  would 

^  Huss  and  his  friend  and  follower,  Jerome,  were  burned  at 
the  slake  in  1415  and  1416,  respectively.  Luther  was  astonished, 
he  said,  to  find  that  he  was  "  a  Hussite  without  knowing  it ; 
that  St.  Paul  and  Augustine  were  Hussites  !  " 

2  The  seventeenth  general  Council  of  the  Church,  convened  at 
Constance  in  Baden  on  the  Rhine,  in  1414. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  187 

allow,  to  promote  God's  truth  on  Earth,  and  save  men's 
souls,  you,  God's  vicegerent  on  earth,  answer  them  by 
the  hangman  and  fire  ?  You  will  burn  me  and  them, 
for  answer  to  the  God's-message  they  strove  to  bring 
you  ?  You  are  not  God's  vicegerent ;  you  are  another's 
than  his,  I  think !  I  take  your  Bull,i  as  an  emparch- 
mented  Lie,  and  burn  it.  You  will  do  what  you  see 
good  next :  this  is  what  I  do.  —  It  was  on  the  10th  of 
December  1520,  three  years  after  the  beginning  of  the 
business,  that  Luther, '  with  a  great  concourse  of  peo- 
ple,' took  this  indignant  step  of  burning  the  Pope's 
fire-decree  'at  the  Elster-Gate  of  Wittenberg.'  Wit- 
tenberg looked  on  '  with  shoutings  ; '  the  whole  world 
was  looking  on.  The  Pope  should  not  have  provoked 
that  '  shout ' !  It  was  the  shout  of  the  awakening 
of  nations.  The  quiet  German  heart,  modest,  patient 
of  much,  had  at  length  got  more  than  it  could  bear. 
Formulism,  Pagan  Popeism,  and  other  Falsehood  and 
corrupt  Semblance  had  ruled  long  enough :  and  here 
once  more  was  a  man  found  who  durst  tell  all  men 
that  God's-world  stood  not  on  semblances  but  on  real- 
ities ;  that  Life  was  a  truth,  and  not  a  lie ! 

At  bottom,  as  was  said  above,  we  are  to  consider 
Luther  as  a  Prophet  Idol-breaker ;  a  bringer-back  of 
men  to  reality.  It  is  the  function  of  great  men  and 
teachers,  Mahomet  said.  These  idols  of  yours  are 
wood ;  you  put  wax  and  oil  on  them,  the  flies  stick 
on  them :  they  are  not  God,  I  teU  you,  they  are  black 
wood!  Luther  said  to  the  Pope,  This  thing  of  yours 
that  you  call  a  Pardon  of  Sins,  it  is  a  bit  of  rag-paper 

^  Papal  decree  (Lat.  hulla='ki\6b,  seal),  written  on  parchment 
with  a  leaden  seal  appended  with  a  cord. 


188  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

with  ink.  It  is  nothing  else ;  it,  and  so  much  hke 
it,  is  nothing  else.-  God  alone  can  pardon  sins.  Pope- 
ship,  spiritual  Fatherhood  of  God's  Church,  is  that  a 
vain  semblance,  of  cloth  and  parchment?  It  is  an 
awful  fact.  God's  Church  is  not  a  semblance.  Heaven 
and  Hell  are  not  semblances.  I  stand  on  this,  since 
you  drive  me  to  it.  Standing  on  this,  I  a  poor  Ger- 
man Monk  am  stronger  than  you  all.  I  stand  soli- 
tary, friendless,  but  on  God's  Truth  ;  you  with  your 
tiaras,^  triple-hats,^  with  your  treasuries  and  armories, 
thunders  spiritual  and  temporal,  stand  on  the  Devil's 
Lie,  and  are  not  so  strong !  — 

The  Diet  of  AVorms,^  Luther's  appearance  there  on 
the  17th  of  April  1521,  maj'  be  considered  as  the 
greatest  scene  in  Modern  European  History  ;  the  point, 
indeed,  from  which  the  whole  subsequent  history  of 
civilisation  takes  its  rise.  After  midtiplied  negotiations, 
disputations,  it  had  come  to  this.  The  young  Emperor 
Charles  Fifth,  with  all  the  Princes  of  Germany,  Papal 
nuncios,  dignitaries  spiritual  and  temporal,  are  assem- 
bled there :  Luther  is  to  appear  and  answer  for  him- 
self, whether  he  will  recant  or  not.  The  world's  pomp 
and  power  sits  there  on  this  hand :  on  that,  stands-up 
for  God's  Truth,  one  man,  the  poor  miner  Hans  Luther's 
Son.  Friends  had  reminded  him  of  Huss,  advised  him 
not  to  go  ;  he  would  not  be  advised.  A  large  company 
of  friends  rode-out  to  meet  him,  with  still  more  earnest 

^  Papal  hat,  encircled  with  three  crowns  and  surmounted  with 
a  globe  and  cross.  The  three  crowns  date  from  the  early  four- 
teenth century.  Their  significance  lias  been  variously  inter- 
preted, but  conclusive  proof  is  wanting.  See  The  Dolphin 
(Phila.),  iv.  No.  3,  September,  1903,  pp.  308,  309,  312. 

^  On  the  Rhine,  in  S.  W.  Germany  (pron.  Voruas). 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  189 

warnings ;  he  answered,  "  Were  there  as  many  Devils 
in  Worms  as  there  are  roof -tiles,  I  would  on."  The 
people,  on  the  morrow,  as  he  went  to  the  Hall  of  the 
Diet,  crowded  the  windows  and  housetops,  some  of 
them  calling  out  to  him,  in  solemn  words,  not  to  re- 
cant :  "  Whosoever  denieth  me  before  men  I  "  ^  they 
cried  to  him,  —  as  in  a  kind  of  solemn  petition  and 
adjuration.  Was  it  not  in  reality  our  petition  too,  the 
petition  of  the  whole  world,  lying  in  dark  bondage  of 
soul,  paralysed  under  a  black  spectral  Nightmare  and 
triple-hatted  Chimera,  calling  itself  Father  in  God, 
and  what  not :  "  Free  us ;  it  rests  with  thee ;  desert 
us  not !  " 

Luther  did  not  desert  us.  His  speech,  of  two  hours, 
distinguished  itself  by  its  resj)ectful,  wise  and  honest 
tone  ;  submissive  to  whatsoever  could  lawfully  claim 
submission,  not  submissive  to  any  more  than  that. 
His  writings,  he  said,  were  partly  his  own,  partly  de- 
rived from  the  Word  of  God.  As  to  what  was  his  own, 
human  infirmity  entered  into  it ;  unguarded  anger, 
blindness,  many  things  doubtless  which  it  were  a  bless- 
ing for  him  could  he  abolish  altogether.  But  as  to 
what  stood  on  sound  truth  and  the  Word  of  God,  he 
could  not  recant  it.  How  could  he  ?  "  Confute  me," 
he  concluded,  "by  proofs  of  Scripture,  or  else  by 
plain  just  arguments :  I  cannot  recant  otherwise.  For 
it  is  neither  safe  nor  prudent  to  do  aught  against  con- 
science. Here  stand  I ;  1  can  do  no  other  :  God  assist 
me  !  "  —  It  is,  as  we  say,  the  greatest  moment  in  the 
Modern  History  of  Men.    English  Puritanism,  Eng- 

^  But  whosoever  shall  deny  me  before  men,  him  will  I  also 
deny  before  my  Father  which  is  in  heaven.    Matt,  x,  33. 


190  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

land  and  its  Parliaments,  Americas,  and  vast  work 
these  two  centuries  ;  French  Revolution,  Europe  and 
its  work  everywhere  at  present :  the  germ  of  it  all  lay 
there  :  had  Luther  in  that  moment  done  other,  it  had 
all  been  otherwise !  The  European  World  was  asking 
him :  Am  I  to  sink  ever  lower  into  falsehood,  stag- 
nant putrescence,  loathsome  accursed  death  ;  or,  with 
whatever  paroxysm,  to  cast  the  falsehoods  out  of  me, 
and  be  cured  and  live  ?  — 

Great  wars,  contentions  and  disunion  followed  out 
of  this  Reformation  ;  which  last  down  to  our  day,  and 
are  yet  far  from  ended.  Great  talk  and  crimination 
has  been  made  about  these.  They  are  lamentable, 
undeniable ;  but  after  all,  what  has  L\ither  or  his 
cause  to  do  with  them?  It  seems  strange  reasoning  to 
charge  the  Reformation  with  all  this.  When  Hercules 
turned  the  purifying  river  into  King  Augeas's  stables,^ 
I  have  no  doubt  the  confusion  that  resulted  was  consid- 
erable all  around:  but  I  think  it  was  not  Hercules's 
blame ;  it  was  some  other's  blame  I  The  Reformation 
might  bring  what  results  it  liked  when  it  came,  but 
the  Reformation  simply  could  not  help  coming.  To  all 
Popes  and  Popes'  advocates,  expostulating,  lamenting 
and  accusing,  the  answer  of  the  world  is :  Once  for  all, 
your  Popehood  has  become  untrue.  No  matter  how 
good  it  was,  how  good  you  say  it  is,  we  cannot  believe 
it ;  the  light  of  our  whole  mind,  given  us  to  walk-by 
from  Heaven  above,  finds  it  henceforth  a  thing  unbe- 

^  One  of  the  "  Twelve  Labors  "  of  Hercules.  He  turned  the 
river  Alpheus  through  the  stables,  where  three  thousand  oxen 
were  kept,  and  cleansed  them  in  a  day  from  the  accumulations 
of  many  years. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  191 

lievable.  We  will  not  believe  it,  we  will  not  try  to 
believe  it,  —  we  dare  not !  The  thing  is  untrue  ;  we 
were  traitors  against  the  Giver  of  all  Trntb,  if  we 
durst  pretend  to  think  it  true.  Away  with  it ;  let 
whatsoever  likes  come  in  the  place  of  it :  with  it  we 
can  have  no  farther  trade !  —  Luther  and  his  Protest- 
antism is  not  responsible  for  wars  ;  the  false  Simu- 
lacra that  forced  him  to  protest,  they  are  responsible. 
Luther  did  what  every  man  that  God  has  made  has 
not  only  the  right,  but  lies  under  the  sacred  duty,  to 
do :  answered  a  Falsehood  when  it  questioned  him, 
Dost  thou  believe  me?  —  No  !  — At  what  cost  soever, 
without  covmting  of  costs,  this  thing  behoved  to  be 
done.  Union,  organisation  spiritual  and  material,  a  far 
nobler  than  any  Popedom  or  Feudalism  in  their  truest 
days,  I  never  doubt,  is  coming  for  the  world  ;  sure  to 
come.  But  on  Fact  alone,  not  on  Semblance  and  Sim- 
ulacrum, will  it  be  able  either  to  come,  or  to  stand 
when  come.  With  union  grounded  on  falsehood,  and 
ordering  us  to  speak  and  act  lies,  we  will  not  have  any- 
thing to  do.  Peace  ?  A  brutal  lethargy  is  peaceable, 
the  noisome  grave  is  peaceable.  We  hope  for  a  living 
peace,  not  a  dead  one  I 

And  yet,  in  prizing  justly  the  indispensable  bless- 
ings of  the  New,  let  us  not  be  unjust  to  the  Old.  The 
Old  teas  true,  if  it  no  longer  is.  In  Dante's  days  it 
needed  no  sophistry,  self-blinding  or  other  dishonesty, 
to  get  itseK  reckoned  true.  It  was  good  then  ;  nay 
there  is  in  the  soul  of  it  a  deathless  good.  The  cry  of 
'  No  Popery  '  is  foolish  enough  in  these  days.  The 
speculation  that  Popery  is  on  the  increase,  building 
new  chapels  and  so  forth,  may  pass  for  one  of  the 


192  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

idlest  ever  started.  Very  curious :  to  count-up  a  few 
Popish  chapels,  listen  to  a  few  Protestant  logic-chop- 
pings,  —  to  much  dull-droning  drowsy  inanity  that  still 
calls  itself  Protestant,  and  say :  See,  Protestantism  is 
daad ;  Popeism  is  more  alive  than  it,  will  be  alive 
after  it !  —  Drowsy  inanities,  not  a  few,  that  call  them- 
selves Protestant  are  dead ;  but  Protestantism  has 
not  died  yet,  that  I  hear  of  !  Protestantism,  if  we  will 
look,  has  in  these  days  produced  its  Goethe,  its  Napo- 
leon ;  German  Literature  and  the  French  Revolution  ; 
rather  considerable  signs  of  life !  Nay,  at  bottom, 
what  else  is  alive  hut  Protestantism  ?  The  life  of 
most  else  that  one  meets  is  a  galvanic  one  merely,  — 
not  a  pleasant,  not  a  lasting  sort  of  life  ! 

Popery  can  build  new  chajjels ;  welcome  to  do  so, 
to  all  lengths.  Popery  cannot  come  back,  any  more 
than  Paganism  can,  —  ichich  also  still  lingers  in  some 
countries.  But,  indeed,  it  is  with  these  things,  as  with 
the  ebbing  of  the  sea:  you  look  at  the  waves  oscillat- 
ing hithei',  thither  on  the  beach  ;  for  minutes  you  can- 
not tell  how  it  is  going ;  look  in  half  an  hour  where  it 
is,  —  look  in  half  a  century  where  your  Popehood  is ! 
Alas,  would  there  were  no  greater  danger  to  our  Eu- 
rope than  the  poor  old  Pope's  revival !  Thor  may  as 
soon  try  to  revive.  —  And  withal  this  oscillation  has  a 
meaning.  The  poor  old  Popehood  will  not  die  away 
entirely,  as  Thor  has  done,  for  some  time  yet ;  nor 
ought  it.  We  may  say,  the  Old  never  dies  till  this 
happen.  Till  all  the  soul  of  good  that  was  in  it  have 
got  itself  transfused  into  the  practical  New.  While 
a  good  work  remains  capable  of  being  done  by  the 
Romish  form ;    or,  what  is  inclusive  of  all,  while   a 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  193 

pious  life  remains  cai:)able  of  being  led  by  it,  just  so 
long,  if  we  consider,  will  this  or  the  other  human  soul 
adopt  it,  go  about  as  a  living  witness  of  it.  So  long  it 
will  obtrude  itself  on  the  eye  of  us  who  reject  it,  till 
we  in  our  practice  too  have  appropriated  whatsoever 
of  truth  was  in  it.  Then,  but  also  not  till  then,  it  will 
have  no  charm  more  for  any  man.  It  lasts  here  for  a 
purpose.    Let  it  last  as  long  as  it  can.  — 

Of  Luther  I  will  add  now,  in  reference  to  all  these 
wars  and  bloodshed,  the  noticeable  fact  that  none 
of  them  began  so  long  as  he  continued  living.^  The 
conti'oversy  did  not  get  to  fighting  so  long  as  he  was 
there.  To  me  it  is  proof  of  his  greatness  in  all  senses, 
this  fact.  How  seldom  do  we  find  a  man  that  has 
stirred-up  some  vast  commotion,  who  does  not  himself 
perish,  swept-away  in  it !  Such  is  the  usual  course  of 
revolutionists.  Luther  continued,  in  a  good  degree, 
sovereign  of  this  greatest  revolution  ;  all  Protestants, 
of  what  rank  or  function  soever,  looking  much  to  him 
for  guidance  :  and  he  held  it  peaceable,  continued  firm 
at  the  centre  of  it.  A  man  to  do  this  must  have  a 
kingly  faculty :  he  must  have  the  gift  to  discern  at 
all  turns  where  the  true  heart  of  the  matter  lies,  and 
to  plant  himself  courageously  on  that,  as  a  strong 
true  man,  that  other  true  men  may  rally  round  him 
there.  He  will  not  continue  leader  of  men  otherwise. 
Luther's  clear  deep  force  of  judgment,  his  force  of  all 
sorts,  of  silence,  of  tolerance  and  moderation,  amon^ 
others,  are  very  notable  in  these  circumstances. 

^  It  was  not  until  1537  that  Luther  put  away  finally  all  hopes 
of  reconciliation  with  the  Church. 


194  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

Tolerance,  I  say  ;  a  very  genuine  kind  of  tolerance  : 
he  distinguishes  what  is  essential,  and  what  is  not ;  the 
unessential  may  go  very  much  as  it  will.  A  complaint 
comes  to  him  that  such  and  such  a  Reformed  Preacher 
'  will  not  preach  without  a  cassock.'  Well,  answers 
Luther,  what  harm  will  a  cassock  do  the  man  ?  '  Let 
him  have  a  cassock  to  preach  in  ;  let  him  have  three 
cassocks  if  he  find  benefit  in  them ! '  His  conduct 
in  the  matter  of  Karlstadt's  ^  wild  image-breaking ; 
of  the  Anabaptists ;  ^  of  the  Peasants'  War,  ^  shows  a 
noble  strength,  very  different  from  spasmodic  violence. 
With  sure  prompt  insight  he  discriminates  what  is 
what :  a  strong  just  man,  he  speaks-forth  what  is  the 
wise  course,  and  all  men  follow  him  in  that.  Luther's 
Written  AYorks  give  similar  testimony  of  him.  The 
dialect  of  these  speculations  is  now  grown  obsolete  for 
us ;  but  one  still  reads  them  with  a  singidar  attraction. 
And  indeed  the  mere  grammatical  diction  is  still 
legible  enough ;  Luther's  merit  in  literary  history  is 
of  the  greatest :  liis  dialect  became  the  language  of  all 
writing.  They  are  not  well  written,  these  Four-and- 
twenty  Quartos  of  his ;  written  hastily,  with  quite 
other  than  literary  objects.  But  in  no  Books  have  I 
found  a  more  robust,  genuine,  I  will  say  noble  faculty 
of  a  man  than  in  these.    A  rugged  honesty,  homehness, 

^  He  carried  Luther's  views  to  extremes  in  his  radical  opposi- 
tion to  priests  and  churches,  resulting  in  riotous  outbreaks  in 
Luther's  absence  from  Wittenberg.  Luther  on  his  return  liad 
much  difficulty  in  restraining  tliese  excesses. 

2  At  Miinster  (1532),  So-called  as  denying  the  validity  of  in- 
fant baptism  and  requiring  adults  to  be  baptized  again  (Gr.  avi 
=  again). 

8  Against  the  Nobles  and  Clergy  (1525),  opposed  by  Luther. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  195 

simplicity  ;  a  rugged  sterling  sense  and  strength.  He 
flashes-out  illumination  from  him ;  his  smiting  idio- 
matic phrases  seem  to  cleave  into  the  very  secret  of 
the  matter.  Good  humour  too,  nay  tender  affection, 
nobleness,  and  depth :  this  man  could  have  been  a 
Poet  too !  He  had  to  loork  an  Epic  Poem,  not  write 
one.  I  call  him  a  great  Thinker ;  as  indeed  his  great- 
ness of  heart  already  betokens  that. 

Richter  says  of  Luther's  words,  '  his  words  are  half- 
battles.'  They  may  be  called  so.  The  essential  quality 
of  him  was,  that  he  could  fight  and  conquer ;  that  he 
was  a  right  piece  of  human  Valour.  No  more  valiant 
man,  no  mortal  heart  to  be  called  braver,  that  one 
has  i-ecord  of,  ever  lived  in  tliat  Teutonic  Kindred, 
whose  character  is  valour.  His  defiance  of  the  '  Devils ' 
in  Worms  was  not  a  mere  boast,  as  the  like  might 
be  if  now  spoken.  It  was  a  faith  of  Luther's  that 
there  were  Devils,  spiritual  denizens  of  the  Pit, 
continually  besetting  men.  Many  times,  in  his  writ- 
ings, this  turns-up ;  and  a  most  small  sneer  has  been 
grounded  on  it  by  some.  In  the  room  of  the  Wartburg  i 
where  he  sat  translating  the  Bible,  they  still  show  you 
a  black  spot  on  the  wall ;  the  strange  memorial  of  one 
of  these  conflicts.  Luther  sat  translating  one  of  the 
Psalms ;  he  was  worn-down  with  long  labour,  with 
sickness,  abstinence  from  food :  there  rose  before  him 
some  hideous  indefinable  Image,  which  he  took  for  the 
Evil    One,  to    forbid    his   work :   Luther    started-up, 

^  Near  Eisenacli,  an  ancient  residence  and  fortress,  where, 
immediately  after  the  Diet  of  Worms,  Luther  was  carried  by  the 
Elector's  troops  for  protection  against  violence  from  the  Papal 
party  :  about  one  hundred  and  thirty  miles  NNE  of  Worms. 


196  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

with  fiend-defiance  ;  flung  his  inkstand  at  the  spectre, 
and  it  disappeared  !  The  spot  still  remains  there  ;  a 
curious  monument  of  several  things.  Any  apothecary's 
apprentice  can  now  tell  us  what  we  are  to  think  of 
this  apparition,  in  a  scientific  sense :  but  the  man's 
heart  that  dare  rise  defiant,  face  to  face,  against  Hell 
itself,  can  give  no  higher  proof  of  fearlessness.  The 
thing  he  will  quail  before  exists  not  on  this  Earth  or 
under  it.  —  Fearless  enough  !  '  The  Devil  is  aware,' 
writes  he  on  one  occasion,  '  that  this  does  not  proceed 
out  of  fear  in  me.  I  have  seen  and  defied  innumer- 
able Devils.  Duke  George,'  of  Leipzig,  a  great  enemy 
of  his,  '  Duke  George  is  not  equal  to  one  DeAal,'  — 
far  short  of  a  Devil !  '  If  I  had  business  at  Leipzig, 
I  would  ride  into  LeijDzig,  though  it  rained  Duke- 
Georges  for  nine  days  running.'  What  a  reservoir  of 
Dukes  to  ride  into  !  — 

At  the  same  time,  they  err  greatly  who  imagine 
that  this  man's  courage  was  ferocity,  mere  coarse  dis- 
obedient obstinacy  and  savagery,  as  many  do.  Far 
from  that.  There  may  be  an  absence  of  fear  which 
arises  from  the  absence  of  thought  or  affection,  from 
the  presence  of  hatred  and  stupid  fury.  We  do  not 
value  the  courage  of  the  tiger  highly  I  With  Luther  it 
was  far  otherwise  ;  no  accusation  could  be  more  unjust 
than  this  of  mere  ferocious  violence  brought  against 
him.  A  most  gentle  heart  withal,  full  of  pity  and 
love,  as  indeed  the  truly  valiant  heart  ever  is.  The 
tiger  before  a  stronger  foe  —  flies:  the  tiger  is  not 
what  we  call  valiant,  only  fierce  and  cruel.  I  know  few 
things  more  touching  than  those  soft  breathings  of 
affection,  soft  as  a  child's  or  a  mother's,  in  this  great 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  197 

wild  heart  of  Luther.  So  honest,  unadulterated  with 
any  cant;  homely,  rude  in  their  utterance;  pure  as 
water  welling  from  the  rock.  What,  in  fact,  was  all  that 
downpressed  mood  of  despair  and  reprobation,  which 
we  saw  in  his  youth,  but  the  outcome  of  preeminent 
thoughtf  vd  gentleness,  affections  too  keen  and  fine  ?  It  is 
the  course  such  men  as  the  poor  Poet  Cowperi  fall  into. 
Luther  to  a  slight  observer  might  have  seemed  a  timid, 
weak  man  ;  modesty,  affectionate  shrinking  tenderness 
the  chief  distinction  of  him.  It  is  a  noble  valour  which 
is  roused  in  a  heart  like  this,  once  stirred-up  into 
defiance,  aU  kindled  into  a  heavenly  blaze. 

In  Luther's  Table-  Talk,  a  posthumous  Book  of  anec- 
dotes and  sayings  collected  by  his  friends,  the  most 
interesting  now  of  all  the  Books  proceeding  from  him, 
we  have  many  beautiful  unconscious  displays  of  the 
man,  and  what  sort  of  nature  he  had.  His  behaviour 
at  the  deathbed  of  his  little  Daughter,  so  still,  so 
great  'and  loving,  is  among  the  most  affecting  things. 
He  is  resigned  that  his  little  Magdalene  should  die, 
yet  longs  inexpressibly  that  she  might  live  ;  —  follows, 
in  awestruck  thought,  the  flight  of  her  little  soul 
through  those  unknown  realms.  Awestruck ;  most 
heartfelt,  we  can  see;  and  sincere, — for  after  aU 
dogmatic  creeds  and  articles,  he  feels  what  nothing 
it  is  that  we  know,  or  can  know:  His  little  Magda- 
lene shall  be  with  God,  as  God  wills  ;  for  Luther  too 
that  is  all ;  Islam  is  all. 

Once  he  looks-out  from  his  solitary  Patmos,^  the 

1  Under  the  shadow   of  melancholia,  or  worse,  all   his   life 
(1731-1800). 

2  The  name  of  an  island  in  the  ^gean  Sea,  where  John  the 


198  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

Castle  of  Coburg,^  in  the  middle  of  the  night :  The 
great  vault  of  Immensity,  long  flights  of  clouds  sail- 
ing through  it,  —  dumb,  gaunt,  huge  :  —  who  snp- 
ports  all  that  ?  "  None  ever  saw  the  pillars  of  it ;  yet 
it  is  supported."  God  supports  it.  We  must  know 
that  God  is  great,  that  God  is  good ;  and  trust, 
where  we  cannot  see.  —  Returning  home  from  Leip- 
zig once,  he  is  struck  by  the  beauty  of  the  harvest- 
fields  :  How  it  stands,  that  golden  yellow  corn,  on  its 
fair  taper  stem,  its  golden  head  bent,  all  rich  and  wav- 
ing there,  —  the  meek  Earth,  at  God's  kind  bidding, 
has  produced  it  once  again  ;  the  bread  of  man  !  —  In 
the  garden  at  Wittenberg  one  evening  at  sunset,  a 
little  bird  has  perched  for  the  night :  That  little  bird, 
says  Luther,  above  it  are  the  stars  and  deep  Heaven 
of  worlds ;  yet  it  has  folded  its  little  wings  ;  gone 
trustfully  to  rest  there  as  in  its  home  :  the  Maker  of 

it  has  given  it  too  a  home  ! Neither  are  mirthful 

turns  wanting  :  there  is  a  great  free  human  heart  in 
this  man.  The  common  speech  of  him  has  a  rugged 
nobleness,  idiomatic,  expressive,  genuine  ;  gleams  here 
and  there  with  beautiful  poetic  tints.  One  feels  him 
to  be  a  great  brother  man.  His  love  of  Music,  indeed, 
is  not  this,  as  it  were,  the  summary  of  all  these  affec- 
tions in  him  ?  Many  a  wild  unutterability  he  spoke- 
forth  from  him  in  the  tones  of  his  flute.  The  Devils 
fled  from  his  flute,  he  says.  Death-defiance  on  the 
one  hand,  and    such  love  of  music  on  the  other ;  I 

Apostle,  in  banishment  "  for  the  testimony  of  Jesus  Christ,"  saw 
the  vision  recorded  in  the  book  of  Revelation. 

^  Where  Luther  lived  for  several  months  in  1530,  and  wrote 
his  famous  hymn,  Einfeste  Burg. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  199 

could  call  these  the  two  opposite  poles  of  a  great  soul ; 
between  these  two  all  great  things  had  room. 

Luther's  face  is  to  me  expressive  of  him  ;  in  Kra- 
nach's  ^  best  portraits  I  find  the  true  Luther.  A  rude 
plebeian  face  ;  with  its  huge  crag-like  brows  and  bones, 
the  emblem  of  rugged  energy  ;  at  first,  almost  a  re- 
pidsive  face.  Yet  in  the  eyes  especially  there  is  a  wild 
silent  sorrow  ;  an  unnamable  melancholy,  the  element 
of  all  gentle  and  fine  affections  ;  giving  to  the  rest 
the  true  stamp  of  nobleness.  Laughter  was  in  this 
Luther,  as  we  said  ;  but  tears  also  were  there.  Tears 
also  were  appointed  him ;  tears  and  hard  toil.  The 
basis  of  his  life  was  Sadness,  Earnestness.  In  his  lat- 
ter days,  after  all  triumphs  and  victoines,  he  expresses 
himself  heartily  weary  of  living  ;  he  considers  that 
God  alone  can  and  wiU  regulate  the  course  thingSjjare 
taking,  and  that  perhaps  the  Day  of  Judgment  is  not 
far.  As  for  him,  he  longs  for  one  thing  :  that  God 
woidd  release  him  from  his  labour,  and  let  him  depart 
and  be  at  rest.  They  understand  little  of  the  man 
who  cite  this  in  discveAit  of  him  !  —  I  will  call  this 
Luther  a  true  Great  Man  ;  great  in  intellect,  in  cour- 
age, affection  and  integrity ;  one  of  our  most  lovable 
and  precious  men.  Great,  not  as  a  hewn  obelisk  ;  but 
as  an  Alpine  mountain,  —  so  simple,  honest,  sponta- 
neous, not  setting-up  to  be  great  at  all ;  there  for  quite 
another  purpose  than  being  great!  Ah  yes,  unsubdu- 
able  granite,  piercing  far  and  wide  into  the  Heavens  ; 
yet  in  the  clefts  of  it  fountains,  green  beautifu^l  val- 
leys with  flowers !     A  right  Spiritual  Hero  and  Pro- 

*  Intimate  friend  of  Luther  (1472-1553),  court  painter  to 
three  Electors  of  Saxony. 


200  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

phet ;  once  more,  a  true  Son  of  Nature  and  Fact,  for 

whom  these  centuries,  and  many  that  are  to  come  yet, 
will  be  thankful  to  Heaven.^ 

The  most  interesting  phasis  which  the  Reformation 
anywhere  assumes,  especially  for  us  English,  is  that  of 
Puritanism.  In  Luther's  own  country  Protestantism 
soon  dwindled  into  a  rather  barren  affair :  not  a  re- 
ligion or  faith,  but  rather  now  a  theological  jangling 
of  ai'gument,  the  proper  seat  of  it  not  the  heart;  the 
essence  of  it  sceptical  contention  :  which  indeed  has 
jangled  more  and  more,  down  to  Voltaireism  itself,  — 
through  Gustavus-Adolphus^  contentions  onward  to 
French-Revolution  ones !  But  in  our  Island  there 
arose  a  Puritanism,  which  even  got  itself  established 
as  a  Presbyterianism  and  National  Church  among  the 
Scotch  ;  which  came  forth  as  a  real  business  of  the 
heart;  and  has  produced  in  the  world  very  notable 
fruit.  In  some  senses,  one  may  say  it  is  the  only 
phasis  of  Pi'otestantism  that  ever  got  to  the  rank 
of  being  a  Faith,  a  true  heart-communication  with 
Heaven,  and  of  exhibiting  itself  in  History  as  such. 
We  must  spare  a  few  words  for  Knox  ;  himself  a 
brave  and  remarkable  man  ;  but  still  more  important 
as  Chief  Priest  and  Founder,  which  one  may  consider 
him  to  be,  of  the  Faith  that  became  Scotland's,  New 
England's,  Oliver  Cromwell's.  History  wiU  have  some- 
thing to  say  about  this,  for  some  time  to  come  ! 

1  Luther  died  in  the  town  of  his  birth,  1546,  and  lies  buried 
in  the  church  at  Wittenberg  on  the  door  of  which  he  nailed  his 
ninety-five  theses. 

2  King  of  Sweden  from  1611  until  his  death  in  1632  ;  leader 
of  the  Protestant  forces  in  the  Thirty  Years'  War  (1618-1648). 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  201 

We  may  censure  Puritanism  as  we  please  ;  and  no 
one  of  us,  I  suppose,  but  would  find  it  a  very  rough 
defective  thing.  But  we,  and  all  men,  may  understand 
that  it  was  a  genuine  thing ;  for  Nature  has  adopted 
it,  and  it  has  grown,  and  grows.  I  say  sometimes, 
that  all  goes  by  wager-of-battle  in  this  world  ;  that 
strength,  well  understood,  is  the  measure  of  all  worth. 
Give  a  thing  time  ;  if  it  can  succeed,  it  is  a  right 
thing.  Look  now  at  American  Saxondom  ;  and  at  that 
little  Fact  of  the  sailing  of  the  Mayflower,  two-hundred 
years  ago,  from  Delft  Haven  in  Holland  !  ^  Were  we 
of  open  sense  as  the  Greeks  were,  we  had  found  a 
Poem  here :  one  of  Nature's  own  Poems,  such  'as  she 
writes  in  broad  facts  over  gTeat  continents.  For  it  was 
properly  the  beginning  of  America :  there  were  strag- 
gling settlers  in  America  before,  some  material  as  of 
a  body  was  there  ;  but  the  soul  of  it  was  first  this. 
These  poor  men,  driven-out  of  their  own  country,  not 
able  well  to  live  in  Holland,  determine  on  settling  in 
the  New  World.  Black  untamed  forests  are  there, 
and  wild  savage  creatures ;  but  not  so  cruel  as  Star- 
chamber  ^  hangmen.  They  thought  the  Earth  would 
yield  them  food,  if  they  tilled  honestly  ;  the  everlasting 
heaven  would  stretch,  there  too,  overhead  ;  they  should 
be  left  in  peace,  to  prepare  for  Eternity  by  living  well 
in  this  world  of  Time ;  worshipping  in  what  they 
thought  the  true,  not  the  idolatrous  way.  They  clubbed 

1  It  was  the  Speedwell  that  sailed  from  Delft  Haven  ;  when 
she  was  abandoned  at  Plymouth  (England)  those  of  her  passen- 
gers that  had  not  lost  courage  were  taken  on  board  the  May- 
flower. 

2  An  English  court,  abolished  in  16-10,  that  decided  cases  on 
its  own  arbitrary  authority  instead  of  according  to  common  law. 


202  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

their  small  means  together ;  hired  a  ship,  the  little 
ship  Mayflower,  and  made  ready  to  set  sail. 

In  Neal's  History  of  the  Puritans  ^  is  an  account  of 
the  ceremony  of  their  departure :  solemnity,  we  might 
call  it  rather,  for  it  was  a  real  act  of  worship.  Their 
minister  went  down  with  them  to  the  beach,  and  their 
brethren  whom  they  were  to  leave  behind;  all  joined 
in  solemn  prayer,  That  Gt)d  would  have  pity  on  His 
poor  children,  and  rjo  with  them  into  tliat  waste  wilder- 
ness, for  He  also  had  made  that,  He  was  there  also  as 
well  as  here.  —  Hah !  These  men,  I  think,  had  a  work! 
The  weak  thing,  weaker  than  a  child,  becomes  strong 
one  day,  if  it  be  a  true  thing.  Puritanisni  was  only 
despicable,  laughable  then  ;  but  nobody  can  manage  to 
laugh  at  it  now.  Puritanism  has  got  weajsons  and 
sinews ;  it  has  fire-arms,  war-navies  ;  it  has  cunning  in 
its  ten  fingers,  strength  in  its  right  arm ;  it  can  steer 
ships,  fell  forests,  remove  mountains ;  —  it  is  one  of 
the  strongest  things  under  this  sun  at  present ! 

In  the  history  of  Scotland,  too,  I  can  find  properly 
but  one  epoch:  we  may  say,  it  contains  nothing  of 
world-interest  at  all  but  this  Reformation  by  Knox. 
A  poor  barren  country,  full  of  continual  broils,  dissen- 
sions, massacrings  :  a  people  in  the  last  state  of  rudeness 
and  destitution,  little  better  perhaps  than  Ireland  at 
this  day.  Hungry  fierce  barons,  not  so  much  as  able 
to  form  any  arrangement  with  each  other  how  to  divide 
what  they  fleeced  from  these  poor  drudges  ;  but  obliged, 
as  the  Columbian  Republics  are  at  this  day,  to  make 
of  every  alteration  a  revolution  ;  no  way  of  changing 
a  ministry  but  by  hanging  the  old  ministers  on  gib- 
1  Neal  (London,  1755),  i.  490.    (Carlyle's  note.) 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  203 

bets :  this  is  a  historical  spectacle  of  no  very  singular 
significance !  '  Bravery '  enough,  I  doubt  not ;  fierce 
fio-htino;  in  abundance :  but  not  bi-aver  or  fiercer  than 
that  of  their  old  Scandinavian  Sea-king"  ancestors ; 
whose  exploits  we  have  not  found  worth  dwelling  on  ! 
It  is  a  country  as  yet  without  a  soul :  nothing  developed 
in  it  but  what  is  rude,  external,  semi-animal.  And 
now  at  the  Reformation,  the  internal  life  is  kindled,  as 
it  were,  imder  the  ribs  of  this  outward  material  death.^ 
A  cause,  the  noblest  of  causes,  kindles  itself,  like  a 
beacon  set  on  high  ;  high  as  Heaven,  yet  attainable 
from  Earth;  —  whereby  the  meanest  man  becomes  not 
a  Citizen  only,  but  a  Member  of  Christ's  visible 
Church  ;  a  veritable  Hero,  if  he  prove  a  true  man ! 

Well ;  this  is  what  I  mean  by  a  whole  '  nation  of 
heroes  ; '  a  believing  nation.  There  needs  not  a  great 
soul  to  make  a  hero ;  there  needs  a  god-created  soul 
which  will  be  true  to  its  origin  ;  that  will  be  a  great 
soul !  The  like  has  been  seen,  we  find.  The  lilce  will 
be  again  seen,  under  wider  forms  than  the  Presbyte- 
rian :  there  can  be  no  lasting  good  done  till  then.  — 
Impossible  !  say  some.  Possible  ?  Has  it  not  6ee;i,  in 
this  world,  as  a  practised  fact  ?  Did  Hero-worship  fail 
in  Knox's  case?  Or  are  we  made  of  other  clay  now? 
Did  the  Westminster  Confession  of  Faith  ^  add  some 
new  property  to  the  soul  of  man  ?  God  made  the  soul 
of  man.  He  did  not  doom  any  soul  of  man  to  live  as 
a  Hypothesis  and  Hearsay,  in  a  world  filled  with  such, 
and  with  the  fatal  work  and  fruit  of  such  !  — 

*  Strains  that  might  create  a  soul 
Under  the  ribs  of  death.      Comus,  561,  562. 
^  The  Presbyterian  creed,  promulgated  by  the  Puritans  in  1646. 


204  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

But  to  return  :  This  that  Knox  did  for  his  Nation, 
I  say,  we  may  really  call  a  resurrection  as  from  death. 
It  was  not  a  smooth  business  ;  but  it  was  welcome 
surely,  and  cheap  at  that  price,  had  it  been  far  i-ougher. 
On  the  whole,  cheap  at  any  price ;  —  as  life  is. 
The  people  began  to  live:  they  needed  first  of  all  to 
do  that,  at  what  cost  and  costs  soever.  Scotch  Litera- 
ture and  Thought,  Scotch  Industry  ;  James  Watt,^ 
David  Hume,2  AValter  Scott,  Robert  Burns:  I  find 
Knox  and  the  Reformation  acting  in  the  heart's  core 
of  every  one  of  these  persons  and  phenomena  :  I  find 
that  without  the  Reforination  they  would  not  have 
been.  Or  what  of  Scotland  ?  The  Puritanism  of  Scot- 
land became  that  of  England,  of  New  England.  A 
tumult  in  the  High  Church  of  Edinburgh  ^  spread  into 
a  universal  battle  and  struggle  over  all  these  realms  ; 
—  there  came  out,  after  fifty -years  struggling,  what  we 
all  call  the  '  Gloriovs  Revolution,'  *  a  Habeas-  Corpus  ^ 
Act,  Free  Parliaments,  and  much  else  !  —  Alas,  is  it 
not  too  true  what  we  said,  That  many  men  in  the  van 
do  always,  like  Russian  soldiers  march  into  the  ditch 
of  Schweidnitz,  and  fiU  it  up  with  their  dead  bodies, 

1  Of  steam-engine  fame  (1736-1819). 

^  Philosopher  and  historian  (1711-1776). 

^  St.  Giles's,  July  23,  1637,  when  Jenny  Geddes,  so  tradition 
reports,  threw  her  folding  stool  at  the  officiating  bishop  in 
protest  against  the  introduction  of  the  Anglican  order  of  service. 

*  Of  1688,  in  opposition  to  the  tyranny  and  Roman  Catholicism 
of  James  II  ;  resulting  in  the  establishment  of  a  purer  constitu- 
tional government,  and  the  accession  to  the  throne  of  William  of 
Orange  and  INIary  (James's  daughter).    Compare  p.  205,  n.  2. 

^  "  Thou  shalt  have  the  body,"  of  a  person,  confined  on  any 
charge,  brought  before  a  magistrate,  to  examine  whether  he  is 
lawfully  deprived  of  his  liberty. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  205 

that  the  rear  may  pass-over  them  dry-shotl,  and  gain 
the  honour  ?  How  many  earnest  nigged  Cromwells, 
Knoxes,  poor  Peasant  Covenanters/  wrestling,  battling 
for  very  life,  in  rough  miry  places,  have  to  struggle, 
and  suffer,  and  fall,  greatly  censured,  be?nired, — be- 
fore a  beautiful  Revolution  of  Eighty-eight  can  step- 
over  them  in  official  pumps  and  silk-stockings,'^  with 
universal  three-times-three ! 

It  seems  to  me  hard  measure  that  this  Scottish  man, 
now  after  three-hundred  years,  should  have  to  plead 
like  a  culprit  before  the  world  ;  intrinsically  for  having 
been,  in  such  way  as  it  was  then  possible  to  be,  the 
bravest  of  all  Scotchmen  !  Had  he  been  a  poor  Half- 
and-half,  he  could  have  crouched  into  the  corner,  like 
so  many  others ;  Scotland  had  not  been  delivered  ;  and 
Knox  had  been  without  blame.  He  is  the  one  Scotch- 
man to  whom,  of  all  others,  his  country  and  the  world 
owe  a  debt.  He  has  to  plead  that  Scotland  would 
forgive  him  for  having  been  worth  to  it  any  million 
'  unblamable '  Scotchmen  that  need  no  forgiveness  !  He 
bared  his  breast  to  the  battle  ;  had  to  row  in  French 
galleys,^  wander  forlorn  in  exile,'^  in  clouds  and  storms ; 

^  Signers  or  adherents  to  the  National  Covenant  (1638),  an 
agreement  to  oppose  the  introduction  of  the  Anglican  ritual  in 
Scotcli  churches. 

^  Formal  court  dress:  —  "It  may  seem  almost  an  abuse  of 
terms  to  call  a  proceeding,  conducted  with  so  much  delibera- 
tion, with  so  much  sobriety,  and  with  such  minute  attention  to 
proscriptive  etiquette,  by  the  terrible  name  of  Revolution." 
Macaulay,  History  of  England,  Chap,  x,  near  end. 

3  See  p.  207,  n.  2. 

*  The  persecutions  of  Queen  Mary  of  England  caused  him  to 
make  the  Continent  his  headquarters  from  1554  to  1559-  Com- 
pare p.  104,  n.  5. 


206  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

was  censured,  shot-at  through  his  windows ;  had  a  right 
sore  fighting  life  :  if  this  world  were  his  place  of 
recompense,  he  had  made  but  a  bad  venture  of  it.  I 
cannot  apologise  for  Knox.  To  him  it  is  very  indiffer- 
ent, these  two-hundred-and-fifty  years  or  more,  what 
men  say  of  him.  But  we,  having  got  above  all  those 
details  of  his  battle,  and  living  now  in  clearness  on  the 
fruits  of  his  victory,  we,  for  our  own  sake,  ought  to 
look  through  the  rumours  and  controversies  enveloping 
the  man,  into  the  man  himself. 

For  one  thing,  I  will  remark  tliat  tins  post  of  Pro- 
phet t©  his  Nation  was  not  of  his  seeking  ;  Knox  had 
lived  forty  years  ^  quietly  obscure,  before  he  became 
conspicuous.  He  was  the  son  of  poor  parents ;  had  got 
a  college  education ;  ^  become  a  Priest ;  adopted  the 
Reformation,  and  seemed  well  content  to  guide  his  own 
steps  by  the  light  of  it,  nowise  unduly  intruding  it  on 
others.  He  had  lived  as  Tutor  in  gentlemen's  families  ; 
preaching  when  any  body  of  persons  wished  to  hear 
liis  doctrine  :  resolute  he  to  walk  by  the  truth,  and 
speak  the  truth  when  called  to  do  it :  not  ambitious  of 
more  ;  not  fancying  himself  capable  of  more.  In  this 
entirely  obscure  way  he  had  reached  the  age  of  forty ; 
was  with  the  small  body  of  Reformers  who  were  stand- 
ing siege  in  St.  Andrew's  Castle,  —  when  one  day  in 
their  chapel,  the  Preacher  after  finishing  his  exhorta- 
tion to  these  fighters  in  the  forlorn  hope,  said  suddenly, 
That  there  ought  to  be  other  speakers,  that  all  men 
who  had  a  priest's  heart  and  gift  in  them  ought  now  to 
speak ;  —  which  gifts  and  heart  one  of  their  own  num- 

^  He  was  born  in  1505. 

^  At  the  University  of  Glasgow,  but  took  no  degree. 


THE  HERO  AS   PRIEST  207 

ber,  John  Knox  the  name  of  him,  had :  Had  he  not  ? 
said  the  Preacher,  appealing  to  all  the  andience :  what 
then  is  his  duty  ?  The  peoj^le  answered  affirmatively ; 
it  was  a  criminal  forsaking-  of  his  post,  if  such  a  man 
held  the  word  that  was  in  him  silent.  Poor  Knox  was 
obliged  to  stand-np  ;  he  attempted  to  reply  ;  he  could 
say  no  word  ;  —  burst  into  a  flood  of  tears,  and  ran 
out.  It  is  worth  remembering,  that  scene.  He  was  in 
grievous  trouble  for  some  days.  He  felt  what  a  small 
faculty  was  his  for  this  great  work.  He  felt  what  a 
baptism  he  was  called  to  be  baptised  withal.^  He  '  burst 
into  tears.' 

Our  primary  characteristic  of  a  Hero,  that  he  is  sin- 
cere, applies  emphatically  to  Knox.  It  is  not  denied 
anywhere  that  this,  whatever  might  be  his  other  qual- 
ities or  faults,  is  among  the  truest  of  men.  With  a 
singular  instinct  he  holds  to  the  truth  and  fact ;  the 
truth  alone  is  there  for  him,  the  rest  a  mere  shadow 
and  deceptive  nonentity.  However  feeble,  forlorn  the 
reality  may  seem,  on  that  and  that  only  can  he  take 
his  stand.  In  the  Galleys  of  the  River  Loire,  whither 
Knox  and  the  others,  after  their  Castle  of  St.  An- 
drew's was  taken,  had  been  sent  as  Galley-slaves,  ^  — 
some  officer  or  priest,  one  day,  presented  them  an  Image 
of  the  Virgin  Mother,  requiring  that  they,  the  blas- 
phemous heretics,  should  do  it  reverence.  Mother? 
Mother  of  God  ?  said  Knox,  when  the  turn  came  to 
him :  This  is  no  Mother  of  God :  this   is  '  a  pented 

^  But  I  have  a  baptism  to  be  baptized  with  ;  and  how  am  I 
straitened  till  it  be  accnmpIMied  !  Lnke  xii,  50. 

2  On  charge  of  being  concerned  in  the  assassination  of  Cardi- 
nal Beatoun,  Knox  was  in  the  galleys  two  years. 


208  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

hredd,'  —  a  piece  of  wood,  I  tell  you,  with  paint  on 
it  I  She  is  fitter  for  swimming,  I  think,  than  for  being 
worshipped,  added  Knox ;  and  flung  the  thing  into  the 
river.  It  was  not  very  cheap  jesting  there :  but  come 
of  it  what  might,  this  thing  to  Knox  was  and  must 
continue  nothing  other  than  the  real  truth  ;  it  was  a 
'pentcd  hredd  ;  worship  it  he  would  not. 

He  told  his  fellow-prisoners,  in  this  darkest  time,  to 
be  of  courage ;  the  Cause  they  had  was  the  true  one, 
and  must  and  would  prosper ;  the  whole  world  could  not 
put  it  down.  Keality  is  of  God's  making;  it  is  alone 
strong.  How  many  'pcnted  hredd s,  pretending  to  be 
real,  are  fitter  to  swim  than  to  be  worshipped !  —  This 
Knox  cannot  live  but  by  fact :  he  clings  to  reality  as 
the  shipwrecked  sailor  to  the  cliff.  He  is  an  instance 
to  us  how  a  man,  by  sincerity  itself,  becomes  heroic : 
it  is  the  grand  gift  he  has.  We  find  in  Knox  a  good 
honest  intellectual  talent,  no  transcendent  one  ;  —  a 
narrow,  inconsiderable  man,  as  compared  with  Luther: 
but  in  heartfelt  instinctive  adherence  to  truth,  in  sin- 
cerity, as  we  say,  he  has  no  superior ;  nay,  one  might 
ask,  What  equal  he  has  ?  The  heart  of  him  is  of  the 
true  Prophet  cast.  "  He  lies  there,"  said  the  Earl  of 
Morton  1  at  his  grave,  "  who  never  feared  the  face  of 
man,"  He  resembles,  more  than  any  of  tlie  moderns, 
an  Old-Hebrew  Prophet.  The  same  inflexibility,  intol- 
erance, rigid  narrow-looking  adherence  to  God's  truth, 
stern  rebuke  in  the  name  of  God  to  all  that  forsake 
truth :  an  Old-Hebrew  Prophet  in  the  guise  of  an 
Edinburgh  Minister  of  the  Sixteenth  Century.  We 
are  to  take  him  for  that ;  not  require  him  to  be  other. 
1  Regent  1572-1577,  executed  1581. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  209 

Knox's  conduct  to  Queen  Mary,^  the  harsh  visits  he 
used  to  make  in  her  own  palace,  to  i-eprove  her  there, 
have  been  much  commented  upon.  Such  cruelty,  such 
coarseness  fills  us  with  indignation.  On  reading  the 
actual  narrative  of  the  business,  what  Knox  said,  and 
what  Knox  meant,  I  must  say  one's  tragic  feeling  is 
rather  disappointed.  They  are  not  so  coarse,  these 
speeches ;  they  seem  to  me  about  as  fine  as  the  circum- 
stances would  permit !  Knox  was  not  there  to  do  the 
courtier  ;  he  came  on  another  errand.  Whoever,  read- 
ing these  colloquies  of  his  with  the  Queen,  thinks  they 
are  vulgar  insolences  of  a  plebeian  priest  to  a  deHcate 
high  lady,  mistakes  the  purport  and  essence  of  them 
altogether.  It  was  unfortunately  not  possible  to  be 
polite  with  the  Queen  of  Scotland,  unless  one  proved 
untrue  to  the.  Nation  and  Cause  of  Scotland.  A  man 
who  did  not  wish  to  see  the  land  of  his  birth  made  a 
hunting-field  for  intriguing  ambitious  Guises,^  and  the 
Cause  of  God  trampled  underfoot  of  Falsehoods,  For- 
mulas and  the  Devil's  Cause,  had  no  method  of  making 
himself  agreeable !  "  Better  that  women  weep,"  said 
Morton,  "  than  that  bearded  men  be  forced  to  weep." 
Knox  was  the  constitutional  opposition-party  in  Scot- 
land :  the  Nobles  of  the  country,  called  by  their  station 
to  take  that  post,  were  not  found  in  it ;  Knox  had  to 
go,  or  no  one.  The  hapless  Queen ;  —  but  the  still  more 
hapless  Country,  if  she  were  made  happy !  Mary  her- 
self was  not  without  sharpness  enough,  among  her  other 
/  ^  The  beautiful,  accomplished,  and  altogether  inscrutable  Mary 
Stuart,  Queen  of  Scots.  Born  1542,  beheaded  1587  ;  of  Roman 
Catholic  faith,  and  of  French-bred  gayety  of  manner. 

2  The  mother  of  the  Queen  was  a  daughter  of  the  French  ducal 
house  of  Guise. 


210  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

qualities :  "  Who  are  you,"  said  she  once,  "  that  pre- 
sume to  school  the  nobles  and  sovereign  of  this  realm  ?" 
— "  Madam,  a  subject  born  within  the  same,"  an- 
swered he.  Reasonably  answered  !  If  the  '  subject ' 
have  truth  to  speak,  it  is  not  the  '  subject's '  footing 
that  will  fail  him  here.  — 

We  blame  Knox  for  his  intolerance.  Well,  surely 
it  is  good  that  each  of  us  be  as  tolerant  as  possible. 
Yet,  at  bottom,  after  all  the  talk  there  is  and  has 
been  about  it,  what  is  tolerance?  Tolerance  has  to 
tolerate  the  ?<7iessential ;  and  to  see  well  what  that  is. 
Tolerance  has  to  be  noble,  measured,  just  in  its  very 
wrath,  when  it  can  tolerate  no  longer.  But,  on  the 
whole,  we  are  not  altogether  here  to  tolerate  !  We  are 
here  to  resist,  to  control  and  vanquish  withal.  We  do 
not  '  tolerate  '  Falsehoods,  Thieveries,  Iniquities,  when 
they  fasten  on  us ;  we  say  to  them,  Thou  art  false, 
thou  art  not  tolerable  !  We  are  here  to  extinguish 
Falsehoods,  and  put  an  end  to  them,  in  some  wise 
way !  I  will  not  quarrel  so  much  with  the  way ;  the 
doing  of  the  thing  is  our  great  concern.  In  this  sense 
Knox  was,  full  surely,  intolerant. 

A  man  sent  to  row  in  French  Galleys,  and  suchlike, 
for  teaching  the  Truth  in  his  own  land,  cannot  always 
be  in  the  mildest  humour !  I  am  not  prepared  to  say 
that  Knox  had  a  soft  temper ;  nor  do  I  know  that  he 
had  what  we  call  an  ill  temper.  An  iU  nature  he  de- 
cidedly had  not.  Kind  honest  affections  dwelt  in  the 
much-enduring,  hard-worn,  ever-battling  man.  That 
he  could  rebuke  Queens,  and  had  such  weight  among 
those  proud  turbulent  Nobles,  proud  enough  whatever 
else  they  were ;  and  could  maintain  to  the  end  a  kind 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  211 

of  virtual  Presidency  and  Sovereignty  in  that  wild 
realm,  he  who  was  only  '  a  subject  born  within  the 
same : '  this  of  itself  will  prove  to  us  that  he  was 
found,  close  at  hand,  to  be  no  mean  acrid  man ;  but 
at  heart  a  healthful,  strong,  sagacious  man.  Such 
alone  can  bear  rule  in  that  kind.  They  blame  him 
for  pulling-down  cathedrals,  and  so  forth,  as  if  he 
were  a  seditious  rioting  demagogue :  precisely  the 
reverse  is  seen  to  be  the  fact,  in  regard  to  cathedrals 
and  the  rest  of  it,  if  we  examine !  Knox  wanted  no 
pulling-down  of  stone  edifices  ;  he  wanted  leprosy  and 
darkness  to  be  thrown  out  of  the  lives  of  men.  Tu- 
mult was  not  his  element ;  it  was  the  tragic  feature  of 
his  life  that  he  was  forced  to  dwell  so  much  in  that. 
Every  such  man  is  the  born  enemy  of  Disorder  ;  hates 
to  be  in  it :  but  what  then  ?  Smooth  Falsehood  is  not 
Order ;  it  is  the  general  sumtotal  of  Z)isorder.  Order  is 
Truth,  —  each  thing  standing  on  the  basis  that  belongs 
to  it :  Order  and  Falsehood  cannot  subsist  together. 

Withal,  unexpectedly  enough,  this  Knox  has  a  vein 
of  drollery  in  him  ;  which  I  like  much,  in  combination 
with  his  other  qualities.  He  has  a  true  eye  for  the 
ridiculous. .  His  History,  with  its  rough  earnestness,  is 
curiously  enlivened  with  this.  When  the  two  Prelates, 
entering  Glasgow  Cathedral,  quarrel  about  precedence ; 
march  rapidly  up,  take  to  hustling  one  another,  twitch- 
ing one  another's  rochets,^  and  at  last  flourishing  their 
crosiers  2  like  quarter-staves,  it  is  a  great  sight '^  for 
him  everyway !  Not  mockery,  scorn,  bitterness  alone  ; 
though  there  is  enough  of  that  too.    But  a  true,  loving, 

*■  A  vestment  worn  usually  by  bishops. 

"^  A  bishop's  staff.  ^  He  calls  it  "  a  merry  game." 


212  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

illuminating  laugh  mounts-up  over  the  earnest  visage  ; 
not  a  loud  laugh  ;  you  would  say,  a  laugh  in  the  eyes 
most  of  all.  An  honest-hearted,  brotherly  man  ;  brother 
to  the  high,  brother  also  to  the  low  ;  sincere  in  his  sym- 
pathy with  both.  He  had  his  pipe  ^  of  Bordeaux  too, 
we  find,  in  that  old  Edinburgh  house  of  his ;  a  cheery 
social  man,  with  faces  that  loved  him !  They  go  far 
wrong  who  think  this  Knox  was  a  gloomy,  spasmodic, 
shrieking  fanatic.  Not  at  all :  he  is  one  of  the  solidest 
of  men.  Practical,  cautious-hopeful,  patient ;  a  most 
shrewd,  observing,  quietly  discerning  man.  In  fact,  he 
has  very  much  the  type  of  character  we  assign  to  the 
Scotch  at  present :  a  certain  sardonic  taciturnity  is  in 
him  ;  insight  enough  ;  and  a  stouter  heart  than  he  him- 
self knows  of.  He  has  the  power  of  holding  his  peace 
over  many  things  which  do  not  vitally  concern  him,  — 
"They?  what  are  they?"  But  the  thing  which  does 
vitally  concern  him,  that  thing  he  will  speak  of ;  and 
in  a  tone  the  whole  world  shall  be  made  to  hear :  all 
the  more  emphatic  for  his  long  silence. 

This  Prophet  of  the  Scotcli  is  to  me  no  hateful  man  ! 
—  He  had  a  sore  fight  of  an  existence  ;  wrestling  with 
Popes  and  Principalities  ;  in  defeat,  contention,  life- 
long struggle ;  rowing  as  a  galley-slave,  wandering  as 
an  exile.  A  sore  fight:  but  he  won  it.  "Have  you 
hope  ?  "  they  asked  him  in  his  last  moment,  when  he 
could  no  longer  speak.  He  lifted  his  finger,  '  pointed 
upwards  with  his  finger,'  and  so  died.^  Honour  to 
him  !  His  works  have  not  died.  The  letter  of  his  work 
dies,  as  of  all  men's  ;  but  the  spirit  of  it  never. 

^  A  measure  of  wine,  —  one  hundred  gallons  and  upwards. 
2  1572. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST  213 

One  word  more  as  to  the  letter  of  Knox's  work. 
The  unforgivable  offence  in  him  is,  that  he  wished  to 
set-up  Priests  over  the  head  of  Kings.  In  other  words, 
he  strove  to  make  the  Government  of  Scotland  a  Theo- 
cracy. This  indeed  is  properly  the  sum  of  his  offences, 
the  essential  sin  ;  for  which  what  pardon  can  there  be  ? 
It  is  most  true,  he  did,  at  bottom,  consciously  or  un- 
consciously, mean  a  Theocracy,  or  Government  of  God. 
He  did  mean  that  Kings  and  Prime  Ministers,  and  all 
manner  of  persons,  in  public  or  private,  diplomatising 
or  whatever  else  they  might  be  doing,  should  walk 
according  to  the  Gospel  of  Christ,  and  understand  that 
this  was  their  Law,  supreme  over  aU  laws.  He  hoped 
once  to  see  such  a  thing  realised ;  and  the  Petition, 
Thy  Kingdom  come.,  no  longer  an  empty  word.  He 
was  sore  grieved  when  he  saw  greedy  worldly  Barons 
clutch  hold  of  the  Church's  j)roperty ;  when  he  ex- 
postulated that  it  was  not  secular  property,  that  it 
was  spiritual  property,  and  should  be  turned  to  true 
churchly  uses,  education,  schools,  worship  ;  —  and  the 
Regent  Murray  ^  had  to  answer,  with  a  shrug  of  the 
shoulders,  "  It  is  a  devout  imagination  !  "  This  was 
Knox's  scheme  of  right  and  truth;  this  he  zealously 
endeavoured  after,  to  realise  it.  If  we  think  his  scheme 
of  truth  was  too  narrow,  was  not  true,  we  may  rejoice 
that  he  could  not  realise  it ;  that  it  remained  after 
two  centuries  of  effort,  unrealisable,  and  is  a  '  devout 
imagination '  still.  But  how  shall  we  blame  h'lm  for 
struggling  to  realise  it?  Theocracy,  Government  of 
God,  is  precisely  the  thing  to  be  struggled  for !    All 

1  Half-brother  of  Mary,  leader  of  the  Protestant  party,  Re- 
gent from  1567,  murdered  1570. 


214  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

Prophets,  zealous  Priests,  are  there  for  that  purpose. 
Hildebrand  ^  wished  a  Theocracy ;  Cromwell  wished  it, 
fought  for  it ;  Mahomet  attained  it.  Nay,  is  it  not 
what  all  zealous  men,  whether  called  Priests,  Prophets, 
or  whatsoever  else  called,  do  essentially  wish,  and  must 
wish?  That  right  and  truth,  or  God's  Law,  reign 
supreme  among  men,  this  is  the  Heavenly  Ideal  (well 
named  in  Knox's  time,  and  namable  in  all  times,  a 
revealed  '  Will  of  God '}  towards  which  the  Reformer 
will  insist  that  all  be  more  and  more  approximated. 
All  true  Reformers,  as  I  said,  are  by  the  nature  of 
them  Priests,  and  strive  for  a  Theocracy. 

How  far  such  Ideals  can  ever  be  introduced  into 
Practice,  and  at  what  point  our  impatience  with  their 
non-introduction  ought  to  begin,  is  always  a  question. 
I  think  we  may  say  safely.  Let  them  introduce  them- 
selves as  far  as  they  can  contrive  to  do  it !  If  they  are 
the  true  faith  of  men,  all  men  ought  to  be  more  or  less 
impatient  always  where  they  are  not  found  introduced. 
There  will  never  be  wanting  Regent-Murray s  enough 
to  shrug  their  shoulders,  and  say,  "  A  devout  imagi- 
nation I  "  We  will  praise  the  Hero-Priest  rather,  who 
does^jkvhat  is  in  him  to  bring  them  in  ;  and  wears-out, 
in  toil,  calumny,  contradiction,  a  noble  life,  to  make 
a  God's  Kingdom  of  this  Earth.  The  Earth  will  not 
become  too  godlike ! 

^  Gregory  VII,  Pope  1073-1085  ;  stoutly  defended  the  suprem- 
acy of  the  Church  against  the  power  of  the  Emperor,  Henry  IV. 


LECTURE  V 

THE    HERO    AS    MAN    OF    LETTERS.      JOHNSON,    ROUS- 
SEAU,  BURNS 

[Tuesday,  19th  May  1840.] 

Hero-gods,  Prophets,  Poets,  Priests  are  forms  of 
Heroism  that  belong  to  the  old  ages,  make  their  ap- 
pearance in  the  remotest  times  ;  some  of  them  have 
ceased  to  be  possible  long  since,  and  cannot  any  more 
show  themselves  in  this  world.  The  Hero  as  Man  of 
Letters,  again,  of  which  class  we  are  to  speak  today, 
is  altogether  a  product  of  these  new  ages  ;  and  so  long 
as  the  wondrous  art  of  Writing,  or  of  Ready- writing 
which  we  call  Printing,  subsists,  he  may  be  expected 
to  continue,  as  one  of  the  main  forms  of  Heroism  for 
all  future  ages.  He  is,  in  various  respects,  a  very 
singular  phenomenon. 

He  ,is  new,  I  say ;  he  has  hardly  lasted  above  a 
century  in  the  world  yet.  Never,  till  about  a  hundred 
years  ago,  was  there  seen  any  figure  of  a  Great  Soul 
living  apart  in  that  anomalous  manner  ;  endeavouring 
to  speak-forth  the  inspiration  that  was  in  him  by 
Printed  Books,  and  find  place  and  subsistence  by 
what  the  world  would  please  to  give  him  for  doing 
that.  Much  had  been  sold  and  bought,  and  left  to 
make  its  own  bargain  in  the  marketplace ;  but  the 
inspired  wisdom  of  a  Heroic  Soul  never  till  then,  in 
that    naked  manner.     He,   with  his  copy-rights  and 


216  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

copy-wrongs,  in  liis  squalid  garret,  in  his  rusty'coat ; 
ruling  (for  this  is  what  he  does),  from  his  grave,  after 
death,  whole  nations  and  generations  who  woidd,  or 
would  not,  give  him  bread  while  living,  —  is  a  rather 
curious  spectacle !  Few  shapes  of  Heroism  can  be 
more  unexpected. 

Alas,  the  Hero  from  of  old  has  had  to  cramp  him- 
self into  strange  shapes :  the  world  knows  not  well  at 
any  time  what  to  do  with  him,  so  foreign  is  his  aspect 
in  the  world !  It  seemed  absurd  to  us,  that  men,  in 
their  rude  admiration,  should  take  some  wise  great 
Odin  for  a  god,  and  worshiji  liiin  as  such ;  some  wise 
great  Mahomet  for  one  god-inspired,  and  religiously 
follow  his  Law  for  twelve  centuries ;  but  that  a  wise 
great  Johnson,  a  Burns,  a  Rousseau,  shoidd  be  taken 
for  some  idle  nondescript,  extant  in  the  world  to  amuse 
idleness,  and  have  a  few  coins  and  applauses  thrown 
him,  that  he  might  live  thereby  ;  this  perhaps,  as  be- 
fore hinted,  will  one  day  seem  a  still  absurder  phasis 
of  things !  —  Meanwhile,  since  it  is  the  spiritual  always 
that  determines  the  material,  this  same  Man-of-Letters 
Hero  must  be  regarded  as  our  most  important  modern 
person.  He,  such  as  he  may  be,  is  the  soul  of  all. 
What  he  teaches,  the  whole  world  will  do  and  make. 
The  world's  manner  of  dealing  with  him  is  the  most 
significant  feature  of  the  world's  general  position. 
Looking  well  at  his  life,  we  may  get  a  glance,  as  deep 
as  is  readily  possible  for  us,  into  the  life  of  those  sin- 
gular centuries  which  have  produced  him,  in  which  we 
ourselves  live  and  work. 

There  are  genuine  Men  of  Letters,  and  not  genuine ; 
as  in  every  kind  there  is  a  genuine  and  a  spurious. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         217 

If  Hero  be  taken  to  mean  genuine,  then  I  say  the 
Hero  as  Man  of  Letters  will  be  found  discharging  a 
function  for  us  which  is  ever  honourable,  ever  the 
highest ;  and  was  once  well  known  to  be  the  highest. 
He  is  uttering-forth,  in  such  way  as  he  has,  the  in- 
spired soul  of  him  ;  aU  that  a  man,  in  any  case,  can 
do.  I  say  insjjired ;  for  what  we  call  'originality,' 
'  sincerity,' '  genius,'  the  heroic  quality  we  have  no  good 
name  for,  signifies  that.  The  Hero  is  he  who  lives  in 
the  inward  sphere  of  things,  in  the  True,  Divine  and 
Eternal,  which  ■  exists  always,  unseen  to  most,  under 
the  Temporary,  Trivial :  his  being  is  in  that ;  he  de- 
clares that  abroad,  by  act  or  speech  as  it  may  be,  in 
declaring  himself  abroad*  His  life,  as  we  said  before, 
is  a  piece  of  the  everlasting  heart  of  Nature  herself :  all 
men's  life  is,  —  but  the  weak  many  know  not  the  fact, 
and  are  untrue  to  it,  in  most  times ;  the  strong  few 
are  strong,  heroic,  perennial,  because  it  cannot  be 
hidden  from  them.  The  Man  of  Letters,  like  every 
Hero,  is  there  to  proclaim  this  in  such  sort  as  he  can. 
Intrinsically  it  is  the  same  function  which  the  old 
generations  named  a  man  Prophet,  Priest,  Divinity  for 
doing  ;  "which  all  manner  of  Heroes,  by  speech  or  by 
act,  are  sent  into  the  world  to  do. 

Ficlite  1  the  German  Philosopher  delivered,  some 
forty  years  ago  at  Erlangen,^  a  highly  remarkable 
Course  of  Lectures  on  this  'subject:  '  Ueher  das 
Wesen  des  Gelehrten,  On  the  Nature  of  the  Literary 
Man.'  Fichte,  in  conformity  with  the  Transcendental 
Philosophy,  of  which  he  was  a  distinguished  teacher, 

1  1762-1848. 

^  University  town  in  Bavaria. 


218  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

declares  first :  That  all  things  which  we  see  or  work 
with  in  this  Earth,  especially  we  ourselves  and  all 
persons,  are  as  a  kind  of  vesture  or  sensuous  Appear- 
ance :  that  under  all  there  lies,  as  the  essence  of  them, 
what  he  calls  the  '  Divine  Idea  of  the  World ; '  this  is 
the  Reality  which  'lies  at  the  bottom  of  all  Appearance.' 
To  the  mass  of  men  no  such  Divine  Idea  is  recognis- 
able in  the  world ;  they  live  merely,  says  Fichte,  among 
the  superficialities,  practicalities  and  shows  of  the 
world,  not  dreaming  that  there  is  anything  divine 
under  them.  But  the  Man  of  Letters  is  sent  hither 
specially  that  he  may  discern  for  himself,  and  make 
manifest  to  us,  this  same  Divine  Idea :  in  every  new 
generation  itwiU  manifest  itself  in  a  new  dialect;  and 
he  is  there  for  the  purpose  of  doing  that.  Such,  is 
Fichte's  phraseology ;  with  which  we  need  not  quarrel. 
It  is  his  way  of  naming  what  I  here,  by  other  words, 
am  striving  imperfectly  to  name  ;  what  there  is  at 
present  no  name  for  :  The  unspeakable  Divine  Signi- 
ficance, full  of  splendour,  of  wonder  and  terror,  that 
lies  in  the  being  of  every  man,  of  every  thing,  —  the 
Presence  of  the  God  who  made  every  man,  and  thing. 
Mahomet  taught  this  in  his  dialect ;  Odin  in  his  :  it 
is  the  thing  which  all  thinking  hearts,  in  one  dialect 
or  another,  are  here  to  teach. 

Fichte  calls  the  Man  of  Letters,  therefore,  a  Prophet, 
or  as  he  prefers  to  phrase  it,  a  Priest,  continually 
unfolding  the  Godlike  to  men  :  Men  of  Letters  are  a 
perpetual  Priesthood,  from  age  to  age,  teaching  all 
men  that  a  God  is  still  present  in  their  life  ;  that  all 
'  Appearance,'  whatsoever  we  see  in  the  world,  is  but 
as  a  vesture  for  the  '  Divine  Idea  of  the  World,'  for 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         219 

*  that  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  Appearance.'  In  the 
true  Literary  Man  there  is  thus  ever,  acknowledged  or 
not  by  the  world,  a  sacredness  :  he  is  the  light  of  the 
world  ;  the  world's  Priest ;  —  guiding  it,  like  a  sacred 
Pillar  of  Fire,  in  its  dark  pilgrimage  through  the  waste 
of  Time.^  Fichte  discriminates  with  sharp  zeal  the  true 
Literary  Man,  what  we  here  call  the  Hero  as  Man  of 
lictters,  from  multitudes  of  false  unheroic.  Whoever 
lives  not  wholly  in  this  Divine  Idea,  or  living  partially 
in  it,  struggles  not,  as  for  the  one  good,  to  live  wholly 
in  it,  —  he  is,  let  him  live  where  else  he  like,  in  what 
pomps  and  prosperities  he  like,  no  Literary  Man  ;  he 
is,  says  Fichte,  a  '  Bungler,  Stibnjjer.''  Or  at  best,  if 
he  belong  to  the  prosaic  provinces,  he  may  be  a  '  Hod- 
man ; '  Fichte  even  calls  him  elsewhere  a  '  Nonentity,' 
and  has  in  short  no  mercy  for  hun,  no  wish  that  he 
should  continue  happy  among  us  !  This  is  Fichte's 
notion  of  the  Man  of  Letters.  It  means,  in  its  own 
form,  precisely  what  we  here  mean. 

In  this  point  of  view,  I  consider  that,  for  the  last 
hundred  years,  by  far  the  notablest  of  all  Literary  Men 
is  Fichte's  countryman,  Goethe.  To  that  man  too,  in 
a  strange  way,  there  was  given  what  we  may  call  a  life 
in  the  Divine  Idea  of  the  World  ;  vision  of  the  inward 
divine  mystery  :  and  strangely,  out  of  his  Books,  the 
world  rises  imaged  once  more  as  godlike,  the  work- 
manship and  temple  of  a  God.  Illuminated  all,  not 
in  fierce  impure  fire-splendour  as  of  Mahomet,  but  in 
mild  celestial  radiance  ;  —  really  a  Prophecy  in  these 

^  And  the  Lord  went  before  them  by  day  in  a  pillar  of  a  cloud, 
to  lead  them  the  way  ;  and  by  night  in  a  pillar  of  fire,  to  give 
them  light.    Exod.  xiii,  21. 


220  LECTWRES  ON  HEROES 

most  unprophetic  times ;  to  my  mind,  by  far  the  great- 
est, though  one  of  the  quietest,  among  all  the  great 
things  that  have  come  to  pass  in  them.  Our  chosen 
specimen  of  the  Hero  as  Literary  Man  would  be  this 
Goethe.^  And  it  were  a  very  pleasant  plan  for  me 
here  to  discourse  of  his  heroism  :  for  I  consider  him  to 
be  a  true  Hero  ;  heroic  in  what  he  said  and  did,  and 
perhaps  still  more  in  what  he  did  not  say  and  did  not 
do  ;  to  me  a  noble  spectacle  :  a  great  heroic  .ancient 
man,  speaking  and  keeping  silence  as  an  ancient  Hero, 
in  the  guise  of  a  most  modern,  high-bred,  high- 
cultivated  Man  of  Letters !  We  have  had  no  such 
spectacle;  no  man  capable  of  affording  such,  for  the 
last  lulndred-and-fifty  years. 

But  at  present,  such  is  the  general  state  of  know- 
ledge about  Goethe,  it  were  worse  than  useless  to 
attempt  speaking  of  him  in  this  case.  Speak  as  I 
might,  Goethe,  to  the  great  majority  of  you,  would 
remain  problematic,  vague ;  no  impression  but  a  false 
one  could  be  realised.  Him  we  must  leave  to  future 
times.  Johnson,  Burns,  Rousseau,  three  great  figures 
from  a  prior  time,  from  a  far  inferior  state  of  circum- 
stances, will  suit  us  better  here.  Three  men  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century ;  the  conditions  of  their  life  far 
more  resemble  what  those  of  ours  still  are  in  England, 
than  what  Goethe's  in  Germany  were.  Alas,  these 
men  did  not  conquer  like  him  ;  they  fought  bravely, 
and  fell.  They  were  not  heroic  bringers  of  the  light, 
but  heroic  seekers  of  it.  They  lived  under  galling 
conditions  ;  struggling  as  under  mouirtains  of  impedi- 

1  Johann  Wolfgang  von  Goethe,  1749-1832.  The  Correspond- 
ence between  Goethe  and  Carlyle  was  published  in  1887. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         221 

ment,  and  could  not  unfold  themselves  into  clearness, 
or  victorious  interpretation  of  that  '  Divine  Idea.'  It 
is  rather  the  Tombs  of  three  Literary  Heroes  that  I 
have  to  show  you.  There  are  the  monumental  heaps, 
under  which  three  spiritual  giants  lie  buried.  Very 
mournful,  but  also  great  and  full  of  interest  for  us. 
We  will  linger  by  them  for  a  while. 

Complaint  is  often  made,  in  these  times,  of  what 
we  call  the  disorganised  condition  of  society  :  how  iU 
many  arranged  forces  of  society  fulfil  their  work ; 
how  many  powerful  forces  are  seen  working  in  a 
wasteful,  chaotic,  altogether  unarranged  manner.  It 
is  too  just  a  complaint,  as  we  all  know.  But  perhaps 
if  we  look  at  this  of  Books  and  the  AVriters  of  Books, 
we  shall  find  here,  as  it  were,  the  summary  of  all  other 
disorganisation ;  —  a  sort  of  heart,  from  which,  and 
to  which,  all  other  confusion  circulates  in  the  world ! 
Considering  what  Book-writers  do  in  the  world,  and 
what  the  world  does  with  Book-writers,  I  should  say, 
It  is  the  most  anomalous  thing  the  world  at  present 
has  to  show.  —  We  should  get  into  a  sea  far  beyond 
sounding,  did  we  attempt  to  give  account  of  this ;  but 
we  must  glance  at  it  for  the  sake  of  our  subject.  The 
worst  element  in  the  life  of  these  three  Literary 
Heroes  was,  that  they  found  their  business  and  posi- 
tion such  a  chaos.  On  the  beaten  road  there  is  toler- 
able travelling  ;  but  it  is  sore  work,  and  many  have  to 
perish,  fashioning  a  path  through  the  impassable  ! 

Our  pious  Fathers,  feeling  well  what  importance  lay 
in  the  speaking  of  man  to  men,  foimded  churches, 
made   endowments,  regulations ;    everywhere  in   the 


222  LECTXTRES  ON  HEROES 

civilised  world  there  is  a  Pulpit,  environed  with  all 
manner  of  complex  dignified  appurtenances  and  fur- 
therances, that  therefrom  a  man  with  the  tongue  may, 
to  best  advantage,  address  his  fellow-men.  They  felt 
that  this  was  the  most  important  thing  ;  that  without 
this  there  was  no  good  thing.  It  is  a  right  pious  work, 
that  of  theirs  ;  beautiful  to  behold !  But  now  with 
the  art  of  Writing,  with  the  art  of  Printing,  a  total 
change  has  come  over  that  business.  The  Writer  of  a 
Book,  is  not  he  a  Preacher  preaching  not  to  this  par- 
ish or  that,  on  this  day  or  that,  but  to  all  men  in  all 
times  and  places  ?  Surely  it  is  of  the  last  importance 
that  he  do  his  work  right,  whoever  do  it  wrong ;  — 
that  the  eye  report  not  falsely,  for  then  all  the  other 
members  are  astray  !  Well ;  how  he  may  do  his  work, 
whether  he  do  it  right  or  wrong,  or  do  it  at  all,  is  a 
point  which  no  man  in  the  world  has  taken  the  pains 
to  think  of.  To  a  certain  shopkeeper,  trying  to  get 
some  money  for  his  books,  if  lucky,  he  is  of  some  im- 
portance ;  to  no  other  man  of  any.  Whence  he  came, 
whither  he  is  bound,  by  what  ways  he  arrived,  by 
what  he  might  be  furthered  on  his  course,  no  one 
asks.  He  is  an  accident  in  society.  He  wanders  like 
a  wild  Ishmaelite,^  in  a  world  of  which  he  is  as 
the  spiritual  light,  either  the  guidance  or  the  mis- 
guidance ! 

Certainly  the  Art  of  Writing  is  the  most  miracu- 
lous of  all  things  man  has  devised.  Odin's  Runes  were 
the  .first  form  of  the  work  of  a  Hero ;  Books,  written 

^  And  he  will  be  a  wild  man  ;  his  hand  will  be  against  every 
man,  and  every  man's  hand  against  him  (said  of  Ishmael); 
Gen.  xvi,  12.   See  p.  68,  n.  3. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS,        223 

words,  are  still  miraculous  I2unes,  the  latest  form ! 
In  Books  lies  the  soul  of  the  whole  Past  Time ;  the 
articulate  audible  voice  of  the  Past,  when  the  body  and 
material  substance  of  it  has  altogether  vanished  like  a 
dream.  Mighty  fleets  and  armies,  harbours  and  arse- 
nals, vast  cities,  high-domed,  many-engined,  —  they  are 
precious,  great :  but  what  do  they  become  ?  Agamem- 
non, the  many  Agamemnons,  Pericleses,  and  their 
Greece;  all  is  gone  now  to  some  ruined  fragments, 
dumb  mournful  wrecks  and  blocks:  but  the  Books  of 
Greece  !  There  Greece,  to  every  thinker,  still  very 
literally  lives  ;  can  be  called-up  again  into  life.  No 
magic  Rune  is  stranger  than  a  Book.  All  that  Man- 
kind has  done,  thought,  gained  or  been  :  it  is  lying  as 
in  magic  preservation  in  the  pages  of  Books.  They 
are  the  chosen  possession  of  men. 

Do  not  Books  still  accomplish  miracles^  as  Runes 
were  fabled  to  do  ?  They  persuade  men.  Not  the 
wretchedest  circulating-library  novel,  which  foolish 
girls  thumb  and  con  in  remote  villages,  but  will  help 
to  regulate  the  actual  practical  weddings  and  house- 
holds of  those  foolish  girls.  So  'Celia'  felt,  so  '  Clif- 
ford '  acted :  the  foolish  Theorem  of  Life,  stamped 
into  those  young  brains,  comes  out  as  a  solid  Practice 
one  day.  Consider  whether  any  Rune  in  the  Avildest 
imagination  of  Mythologist  ever  did  such  wonders  as, 
on  the  actual  firm  Earth,  some  Books  have  done! 
What  built  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  ?  Look  at  the  heart 
of  the  matter,  it  was  that  divine  Hebrew  Book,  —  the 
word  partly  of  the  man  Moses,  an  outlaw  tending  his 
Midianitish  herds,  four-thousand  years  ago,  in  the 
wilderness  of  Sinai !    It  is  the  strangest  of  things,  yet 


224         .  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

nothing  is  truer.  With  the  art  of  Writing,  of  which 
Printing  is  a  simple,  an  inevitable  and  comparatively 
insignificant  corollary,  the  true  reign  of  miracles  for 
mankind  commenced.  It  related,  with  a  wondrous  new 
contiguity  and  perpetual  closeness,  the  Past  and  Dis- 
tant with  the  Present  in  time  and  place ;  all  times 
and  all  places  with  this  our  actual  Here  and  Now. 
All  things  were  altered  for  men  ;  all  modes  of  impor- 
tant work  of  men :  teaching,  preaching,  governing,  and 
all  else. 

To  look  at  Teaching,  for  instance.  Universities  are 
a  notable,  respectable  product  of  the  modern  ages. 
Their  existence  too  is  modified,  to  the  very  basis  of 
it,  by  the  existence  of  Books.  Universities  arose  while 
there  were  yet  no  Books  procurable ;  while  a  man, 
for  a  single  Book,  had  to  give  an  estate  of  land.  That, 
in  those  circumstances,  when  a  man  had  some  know- 
ledge to  communicate,  he  should  do  it  by  gathering 
the  learners  round  him,  face  to  face,  was  a  necessity 
for  him.  If  you  wanted  to  know  what  Abe  lard  ^  knew, 
you  must  go  and  listen  to  Abelard.  Thousands,  as 
many  as  thirty-thousand,  went  to  hear  Abelard  and 
that  metaphysical  theology  of  his.  And  now  for  any 
other  teacher  who  had  also  something  of  his  own  to 
teach,  there  was  a  great  convenience  opened  :  so  many 
thousands  eager  to  learn  were  already  assembled  yon- 
der ;  of  all  places  the  best  place  for  him  was  that.  For 
any  third  teacher  it  was  better  still ;  and  grew  ever 
the  better,  the  more  teachers  there  came.  It  only 
needed  now  that  the  King   took  notice  of  this  new 

^  French  philosopher,  theologian,  and  teacher  (1079-1142)  ; 
most  famous  as  the  lover  of  H^loi'se.  See  Pope's  Elaisa  to  Abelard. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         225 

phenomenon ;  combined  or  agglomerated  the  various 
schools  into  one  school ;  gave  it  edifices,  privileges, 
encouragements,  and  named  it  Univej'sitas,  or  School 
of  all  Sciences  :  the  University  of  Paris,  in  its  essential 
characters,  was  there.  The  model  of  all  subsequent 
Universities ;  which  down  even  to  these  days,  for  six 
centuries  now,  have  gone  on  to  found  themselves.  Such, 
I  conceive,  was  the  origin  of  Universities. 

It  is  clear,  however,  that  with  this  simple  circmn- 
stance,  facility  of  getting  Books,  the  whole  conditions 
of  the  business  from  top  to  bottom  were  changed. 
Once  invent  Printing,  you  metamorphosed  all  Uni- 
versities, or  superseded  them!  The  Teacher  needed 
not  now  to  gather  men  personally  round  him,  that  he 
might  sjjeak  to  them  what  he  knew  :  print  it  in  a 
Book,  and  all  learners  far  and  wide,  for  a  trifle,  had 
it  each  at  his  own  fireside,  much  more  effectually  to 
learn  it !  —  Doubtless  there  is  still  peculiar  virtue  in 
Speech  ;  even  writers  of  Books  may  still,  in  some 
circumstances,  find  it  convenient  to  speak  also,  —  wit- 
ness our  present  meeting  here  !  There  is,  one  would 
say,  and  must  ever  remain  while  man  has  a  tongue, 
a  distinct  province  for  Speech  as  well  as  for  Writing 
and  Printing.  In  regard  to  all  things  this  must  re- 
main ;  to  Universities  among  others.  But  the  limits 
of  the  two  have  nowhere  yet  been  pointed  out,  ascer- 
tained ;  much  less  put  in  practice :  the  University 
which  wonld  completely  take-in  that  great  new  fact, 
of  the  existence  of  Printed  Books,  and  stand  on  a  clear 
footing  for  the  Nineteenth  Century  as  the  Paris  one 
did  for  the  Thirteenth,  has  not  yet  come  into  existence. 
If  we  think  of  it,  all  that  a  University  or  final  highest 


226  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

School  can  do  for  us,  is  still  but  what  the  first  School 
began  doing,  —  teach  us  to  read.  We  learn  to  read, 
in  various  languages,  in  various  sciences ;  we  learn 
the  alphabet  and  letters  of  all  manner  of  Books.  But 
the  place  where  we  are  to  get  knowledge,  even  theo- 
retic knowledge,  is  the  Books  themselves !  It  depends 
on  what  we  read,  after  all  manner  of  Professors  have 
done  their  best  for  us.  The  true  University  of  these 
days  is  a  Collection  of  Books. 

But  to  the  Church  itself,  as  I  hinted  already,  all  is 
changed,  in  its  preaching,  in  its  working,  by  the  intro- 
duction of  Books.  The  Church  is  the  working  recog- 
nised Union  of  our  Priests  or  Prophets,  of  those  who 
by  wise  teaching  guide  the  souls  of  men.  While  there 
was  no  Writing,  even  while  there  was  no  Easy-writing 
or  Printing,  the  preaching  of  the  voice  was  the  natu- 
ral sole  method  of  performing  this.  But  now  with 
Books  !  —  He  that  can  write  a  true  Book,  to  persuade 
England,  is  not  he  the  Bishop  and  Archbishop,  the 
Primate  of  England  and  of  All  England  ?  I  many  a 
time  say,  the  writers  of  Newspapers,  Pamphlets,  Poems, 
Books,  these  are  the  real  working  effective  Church 
of  a  modern  country.  Nay  not  only  our  preaching, 
but  even  our  worship,  is  not  it  too  accomplished  by 
means  of  Printed  Books  ?  The  noble  sentiment  which 
a  gifted  soul  has  clothed  for  us  in  melodious  words, 
which  brings  melody  into  our  hearts,  —  is  not  this 
essentially,  if  we  will  understand  it,  of  the  nature  of 
worship?  There  are  many,  in  aU  eoimtries,  who,  in 
this  confused  time,  have  no  other  method  of  worship. 
He  who,  in  any  way,  shows  us  better  than  we  knew 
before  that  a  lily  of  the  fields^  is  beautiful,  does  he 
1  See  p.  112  n.  1. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         227 

not  show  it  us  as  an  effluence  of  the  Fountain  of  all 
Beauty  ;  as  the  handwriting^  made  visible  there,  of 
the  great  Maker  of  the  Universe  ?  He  has  sung  for  us, 
made  us  sing  with  him,  a  little  verse  of  a  sacred  Psalm. 
Essentially  so.  How  much  more  he  who  sings,  who 
says,  or  in  any  way  brings  home  to  our  heart  the 
noble  doings,  feelings,  darings  and  endurances  of  a 
brother  man !  He  has  verily  touched  our  hearts  as 
with  a  live  coal  from  the  altar?-  Perhaps  there  is  no 
worship  more  authentic. 

Literature,  so  far  as  it  is  Literature,  is  an  '  apoca- 
lypse of  Nature,'  a  revealing  of  the  '  open  secret.'  It 
may  well  enough  be  named,  in  Fichte's  style,  a  '  con- 
tinuous revelation '  of  the  Godlike  in  the  Terrestrial 
and  Common.  The  Godlike  does  ever,  in  very  truth, 
endure  there  ;  is  brought  out,  now  in  this  dialect,  now 
in  that,  with  various  degrees  of  clearness :  all  true 
gifted  Singers  and  Speakers  are,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, doing  so.  The  dark  stormf  ul  indignation  of  a 
Byron, 2  so  wayward  and  perverse,  may  have  touches 
of  it ;  nay  the  withered  mockery  of  a  French  sceptic,^ 
—  his  mockery  of  the  False,  a  love  and  wprship  of  the 
True.  How  much  more  the  sphere-harmony  of  a  Shak- 
speare,  of  a  Goethe ;  the  cathedral-music  of  a  Milton ! 
They  are  something  too,  those  humble  genuine  lark- 
notes  of  a  Burns,  —  skylark,  starting  from  the  humble 
furrow,  far  overhead  into  the  blue  depths,  and  singing 
to  us  so  genuinely  there  !    For  all  true  singing  is  of  the 

^  Then  flew  cue  of  the  seraphims  nnto  me,  having  a  live  coal 
in  his  hand,  which  he  had  taken  with  the  tongs  from  off  the 
altar  :  and  lie  laid  it  upon  my  mouth,  .  .  .  Isaiah  vi,  6,  7. 

2  1788-1824.  See  add.  note.  3  Voltaire.   See  p.  20,  n.  2. 


228  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

nature  of  worship ;  as  indeed  all  true  worjdng  may  be 
said  to  be,  —  whereof  such  singing  is  but  the  record, 
and  fit  melodious  representation,  to  us.  Fragments  of 
a  real  '  Church  Liturgy '  and  '  Body  of  Homilies,' 
strangely  disguised  from  the  common  eye,  are  to  be 
found  weltering  in  that  huge  froth-ocean  of  Printed 
Speech  we  loosely  call  Literature!  Books  are  our 
Church  too. 

Or  turning  now  to  the  Government  of  men.  Witen- 
»agemote,^  old  Parliament,  was  a  gi-eat  thing.  The 
affairs  of  the  nation  were  there  deliberated  and 
decided ;  what  we  were  to  do  as  a  nation.  But  does 
not,  though  the  name  Parliament  subsists,  the  parlia- 
mentary debate  go  on  now,  everywhere  and  at  aU 
times,  in  a  far  more  comprehensive  way,  out  of  Parlia- 
ment altogether?  Burke  said  there  were  Three  Es- 
tates ^  in  Parliament ;  but,  in  the  Reporters'  Gallery 
yonder,  there  sat  a  Fourth  Estate  more  important  far 
than  they  all.  It  is  not  a  figure  of  speech,  or  a  witty 
saying ;  it  is  a  literal  fact,  —  very  momentous  to  us  in 
these  times.  Literature  is  our  Parliament  too.  Print- 
ing, which  comes  necessarily  out  of  Writing,  I  say 
often,  is  equivalent  to  Democracy :  invent  Writing, 
Democracy  is  inevitable.  Writing  brings  Printing; 
brings  universal  every-day  extempore  Printing,  as  we 
see  at  present.  Whoever  can  speak,  speaking  now  to 
the  whole  nation,  becomes  a  power,  a  branch  of  govern- 
ment, with  inalienable  weight  in  law-making,  in  all 
acts  of  authority.    It  matters  not  what  rank  he  has, 

^  "  Assembly  of  counselors,"  the  supreme  parliamentary  body 
of  the  nation  in  Anglo-Saxon  times. 
2  Clergy,  Nobles,  and  Commons. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         229 

what  revenues  or  gai-nitures :  the  requisite  thing  is, 
that  he  have  a  tongue  which  others  will  listen  to ;  this 
and  nothing  more  is  requisite.  The  nation  is  governed 
by  all  that  has  tongue  in  the  nation :  Democracy  is 
virtually  there.  Add  only,  that  whatsoever  power 
exists  will  have  itself,  by  and  by,  organised;  working 
secretly  under  bandages,  obscurations,  obstructions,  it 
will  never  rest  till  it  get  to  work  free,  unencumbered, 
visible  to  all.  Democracy  virtually  extant  will  insist 
on  becoming  palpably  extant.  — 

On  all  sides,  are  we  not  driven  to  the  conclusion 
that,  of  the  tilings  which  man  can  do  or  make  here 
below,  by  far  the  most  momentous,  wonderful  and 
worthy  are  the  things  we  call  Books !  Those  poor  bits 
of  rag-paper  with  black  ink  on  them ;  —  from  the  Daily 
Newspaper  to  the  sacred  Hebrew  Book,  what  have 
they  not  done,  what  are  they  not  doing !  —  For  indeed, 
whatever  be  the  outward  form  of  the  thing  (bits  of 
paper,  as  we  say,  and  black  ink),  is  it  not  verily,  at 
bottom,  the  highest  act  of  man's  faculty  that  produces 
a  Book?  It  is  the  Thought  of  man;  the  true  thauma- 
turgic  ^  virtue  ;  by  which  man  works  all  things  what- 
soever. All  that  he  does,  and  brings  to  pass,  is  the 
vesture  of  a  Thought.  This  London  City,  with  all  its 
houses,  palaces,  steamengines,  cathedrals,  and  huge 
immeasurable  traffic  and  tumult,  what  is  it  but  a 
Thought,  but  millions  of  Thoughts  made  into  One ;  — 
a  huge  immeasurable  Spirit  of  a  Thought,  embodied 
in  brick,  in  iron,  smoke,  dust,  Palaces,  Parliaments, 
Hackney  Coaches,  Katherine  Docks,  and  the  rest  of 
it!  Not  a  brick  was  made  but  some  man  had  to  thinh 
1  Wonder-  or  miracle-working. 


230  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

of  the  making  of  that  brick.  —  The  thing  we  called 
'  bits  of  paper  with  traces  of  black  ink,'  is  the  pvrest 
embodiment  a  Thought  of  man  can  have.  No  wonder 
it  is,  in  all  ways,  the  activest  and  noblest. 

All  this,  of  the  importance  and  supreme  importance 
of  the  Man  of  Letters  in  modern  Society,  and  how  the 
Press  is  to  such  a  degree  sujierseding  the  Pulpit,  the 
Senate,  the  Senatus  Academicus  and  much  else,  has 
been  admitted  for  a  good  while ;  and  recognised  often 
enough,  in  late  times,  with  a  sort  of  sentimental 
triumph  and  wonderment.  It  seems  to  me,  the  Senti- 
mental by  and  by  will  have  to  give  place  to  the  Prac- 
tical. If  Men  of  Letters  are  so  incalculably  influential, 
actually  performing  such  work  for  us  from  age  to 
age,  and  even  from  day  to  day,  then  I  think  we  may 
conclude  that  Men  of  Letters  will  not  always  wander 
like  unrecognised  unregulated  Islnnaelites  among  us ! 
Whatsoever  thing,  as  I  said  above,  has  virtual  un- 
noticed power  wiU  cast-off  its  wrappages,  bandages,  and 
step-forth  one  day  with  palpably  articulated,  universally 
visible  power.  That  one  man  wear  the  clothes,  and 
take  the  wages,  of  a  function  which  is  done  by  quite 
another :  there  can  be  no  profit  in  this ;  this  is  not 
right,  it  is  wrong.  And  yet,  alas,  the  viahing  of  it 
right,  —  what  a  business,  for  long  times  to  come ! 
Sure  enough,  this  that  we  call  Organisation  of  the 
Literary  Guild  is  still  a  great  way  off,  encumbered 
with  all  manner  of  complexities.  If  you  asked  me 
what  were  the  best  possible  organisation  for  the 
Men  of  Letters  in  modern  society;  the  arrangement 
of  furtherance  and  regulation,  grounded  the  most 
accurately  on  the  actual  facts  of  their  position  and 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         231 

of  the  world's  position,  —  I  sliould  beg  to  say  that 
the  problem  far  exceeded  my  faculty !  It  is  not  one 
man's  faculty ;  it  is  that  of  many  successive  men 
turned  earnestly  upon  it,  that  will  bring-out  even  an 
approximate  solution.  What  the  best  arrangement 
were,  none  of  us  could  say.  But  if  you  ask,  Which 
is  the  worst  ?  I  answer :  This  which  we  now  have, 
that  Chaos  should  sit  umpire  ^  in  it ;  this  is  the  worst. 
To  the  best,  or  any  good  one,  there  is  yet  a  long 
way. 

One  remark  I  must  not  omit,  That  royal  or  parlia- 
mentary grants  of  money  are  by  no  means  the  chief 
thing  wanted  !  To  give  our  Men  of  Letters  stipends, 
endowments  and  all  furtherance  of  cash,  will  do  little 
towards  the  business.  On  the  whole,  one  is  weary  of 
hearing  about  the  omnipotence  of  money.  I  will  say 
rather  that,  for  a  genuine  man,  it  is  no  evil  to  be 
poor  ;  that  there  ought  to  be  Literary  Men  poor,  - —  to 
show  whether  they  are  genuine  or  not !  Mendicant 
Orders,  bodies  of  good  men  doomed  to  heg^  were  in- 
stituted in  the  Christian  Church ;  a  most  natural  and 
even  necessary  development  of  the  spirit  of  Christian- 
ity. It  was  itself  founded  on  Poverty,  on  Sorrow, 
Contradiction,  Crucifixion,  every  species  of  worldly 
Distress  and  Degradation.  W^e  may  say,  that  he  who 
has  not  known  those  tilings,  and  learned  from  them 
the  priceless  lessons  they  have  to  teach,  has  missed  a 
good  opportunity  of  schooling.    To  beg,    and  go  bare- 

1  Chaos  umpire  sits, 
And  by  decision  more  imbroils  the  fray 
By  which  he  reigns. 

Paradise  Lost,  II,  907-909. 


232  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

foot,  in  coarse  woollen  cloak  with  a  rope  round  your 
loins,  and  be  despised  of  all  the  woi-ld,  was  no  beauti- 
ful business; — nor  an  honourable  one  in  any  eye,  till 
the  nobleness  of  those  who  did  so  had  made  it 
honoured  of  some ! 

Begging  is  not  in  our  course  at  the  present  time : 
but  for  the  rest  of  it,  who  will  say  that  a  Johnson  is 
not  perhaps  the  better  for  being  poor?  It  is  need- 
ful for  him,  at  all  rates,  to  know  that  outward  profit, 
that  success  of  any  kind  is  not  the  goal  he  has  to  aim 
at.  Pride,  vanity,  ill-conditioned  egoism  of  all  sorts, 
are  bred  in  his  heart,  as  in  every  heart ;  need,  above 
all,  to  be  cast-out  of  his  heart,  —  to  be,  with  what- 
ever pangs,  torn-out  of  it,  cast-forth  from  it,  as  a 
thing  worthless.  Byron,  born  rich  and  noble,  made- 
out  even  less  than  Burns,  poor  and  plebeian.  Who 
knows  but,  in  that  same  '  best  possible  organisation ' 
as  yet  far  off,  Poverty  may  still  enter  as  an  important 
element  ?  What  if  our  Men  of  Letters,  men  setting-up 
to  be  Spiritual  Heroes,  were  still  theii,  as  they  now 
are,  a  kind  of  '  involuntary  monastic  order ; '  bound 
still  to  this  same  ugly  Povert}^ ,  —  till  they  had  tried 
what  was  in  it  too,  tiU  they  had  learned  to  make  it  too 
do  for  them !  Money,  in  truth,  can  do  much,  but  it 
cannot  do  all.  We  must  know  the  province  of  it,  and 
confine  it  there ;  and  even  spurn  it  back,  when  it 
wishes  to  get  farther. 

Besides,  were  the  money-furtherances,  the  proper 
season  for  them,  the  fit  assigner  of  them,  all  settled,  — 
how  is  the  Burns  to  be  recognised  that  merits  these? 
He  must  pass  through  the  ordeal,  and  prove  himself. 
This  ordeal ;  this  wild  welter  of   a  chaos  which  is 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN   OF  LETTERS         233 

called  Literary  Life :  this  too  is  a  kind  of  ordeal ! 
There  is  clear  truth  iu  the  idea  that  a  strug-ole  from 
the  lower  classes  of  society,  towards  the  upper  regions 
and  rewards  of  society,  must  ever  continue.  Strong 
men  are  born  there,  who  ought  to  stand  elsewhei*e 
than  there.  The  manifold,  inextricably  complex,  uni- 
versal struggle  of  these  constitutes  and  must  con- 
stitute, what  is  called  the  progress  of  society.  For 
Men  of  Letters,  as  for  all  other  sorts  of  men.  How  to 
regidate  that  struggle?  There  is  the  whole  question. 
To  leave  it  as  it  is,  at  the  mercy  of  blind  Chance ;  a 
whirl  of  distracted  atoms,  one  cancelling  the  other ; 
one  of  the  thousand  arriving  saved,  nine-hundred-and- 
ninety-nine  lost  by  the  way ;  your  royal  Johnson 
languishing  inactive  in  garrets,  or  harnessed  to  the 
yoke  of  Printer  Cave ;  ^  your  Burns  dying  broken- 
hearted as  a  Ganger ;  your  Rousseau  driven  into 
mad  exasperation,  kindling  French  Revolutions  by 
his  paradoxes :  this,  as  we  said,  is  clearly  enough  the 
worst  regulation.    The  hest,  alas,  is  far  from  us ! 

And  yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  but  it  is  coming ; 
advancing  on  us,  as  yet  hidden  iu  the  bosom  of  cen- 
turies :  this  is  a  prophecy  one  can  risk.  For  so  soon  as 
men  get  to  discern  the  importance  of  a  thing,  they  do 
infallibly  set  about  arranging  it,  facilitating,  forward- 
ing it ;  and  rest  not  till,  in  some  approximate  degree, 
they  have  accomplished  that.  I  say,  of  all  Priesthoods, 
Aristocracies,  Governing  Classes  at  present  extant  in 
the  world,  there  is  no  class  comparable  for  importance 
to  that  Priesthood  of  the  Writers  of  Books.    This  is  a 

^  Founder   of    The    Gentleman's   Magazine  (1731),  to   which 
Johusou  for  a  time  contributed. 


234  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

fact  which  he  who  runs  may  read,  —  and  draw  in- 
ferences from.  "  Literature  will  take  care  of  itself," 
answered  Mr.  Pitt,^  when  applied-to  for  some  help 
for  Burns.  "  Yes,"  adds  Mr.  Southey,^  "  it  will  take 
care  of  itself ;  and  of  you  too,  if  you  do  not  look  to 
it!" 

The  result  to  individual  Men  of  Letters  is  not  the 
momentous  one ;  they  are  but  individuals,  an  infini- 
tesimal fraction  of  the  great  body ;  they  can  struggle 
on,  and  live  or  else  die,  as  they  have  been  wont. 
But  it  deeply  concerns  the  whole  society,  whether  it 
will  set  its  light  on  high  places,  to  walk  thereby ; 
or  trample  it  under  foot,  and  scatter  it  in  all  ways 
of  wild  waste  (not  without  conflagration),  as  hereto- 
fore !  Light  is  the  one  thing  wanted  for  the  world. 
Put  wisdom  in  the  head  of  the  world,  the  world  will  fight 
its  battle  victoriously,  and  be  the  best  world  man  can 
make  it.  I  call  this  anomaly  of  a  disorganic  Literary 
Class  the  heart  of  all  other  anomalies,  at  once  product 
and  parent ;  some  good  arrangement  for  that  would 
be  as  the  j)unctum,  salicns  of  a  new  vitality  and  just 
arrangement  for  all.  Already,  in  some  European 
countries,  in  France,  in  Prussia,  one  traces  some 
beginning  of  an  arrangement  for  the  Literary  Class; 
indicating  the  gradual  possibility  of  such.  I  believe 
that  it  is  possible  ;  that  it  will  have  to  be  possible. 

By  far  the  most  interesting  fact  I  hear  about  the 
Chinese  is  one  on  which  we  cannot  arrive  at  clearness, 
but  which  excites  endless  curiosity  even  in  the  dim 

1  William  Pitt,  the  Younger  (1759-1806),  several  times  Prime 
Minister. 

2  English  poet  (laureate)  and  prose-writer  (1774-1843). 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         235 

state  :  this  namely,  that  tliey  do  attempt  to  make  their 
Men  of  Letters  their  Governors !  ^  It  would  be  rash 
to  say,  one  understood  how  tliis  was  done,  or  with  what 
degree  of  success  it  was  done.  All  such  things  must 
be  very  unsuccessful ;  yet  a  small  degree  of  success  is 
precious  ;  the  very  attempt  how  precious  !  There  does 
seem  to  be,  all  over  China,  a  more  or  less  active  search 
everywhere  to  discover  the  men  of  talent  that  grow 
up  in  the  young  generation.  Schools  there  are  for  every 
one:  a  foolish  sort  of  training,  yet  still  a  sort.  The 
youths  who  distinguish  themselves  in  the  lower  school 
are  promoted  into  favourable  stations  in  the  higher, 
that  they  may  still  more  distinguish  themselves,  —  for- 
ward and  forward :  it  appears  to  be  out  of  these  that 
the  Official  Persons,  and  incipient  Governors,  are  taken. 
These  are  they  whom  they  ti'y  first  whether  they  can 
govern  or  not.  And  surely  with  the  best  hope  :  for  they 
are  the  men  that  have  already  shown  intellect.  Try 
them:  they  have  not  governed  or  administered  as  yet ; 
perhaps  they  cannot ;  but  there  is  no  doubt  they  have 
some  Understanding,  —  without  which  no  man  can ! 
Neither  is  Understanding  a  tool,  as  we  are  too  apt  to 
figure ;  '  it  is  a  hand  which  can  handle  any  tool.'  Try 
these  men :  they  are  of  all  others  the  best  worth  try- 
ing. —  Surely  there  is  no  kind  of  government,  consti- 
tution, revolution,  social  apparatus  or  arrangement, 
that  I  know  of  in  this  world,  so  promising  to  one's 
scientific  curiosity  as  this.  The  man  of  intellect  at  the 
top  of  affairs :  this  is, the  aim  of  all  constitutions  and 

^  The  Emperor  appoints  the  officers  of  the  government  from 
the  Literati,  who  receive  their  degrees  by  competitive  examina- 
tion, and  constitute  the  highest  social  class. 


236  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

revolutions,  if  they  have  any  aim.  For  the  man  of 
true  intellect,  as  I  assert  and  believe  always,  is  the 
noblehearted  man  withal,  the  true,  just,  humane  and 
valiant  man.  Get  him  for  governor,  aU  is  got ;  fail 
to  get  him,  though  you  had  Constitutions  plentiful  as 
blackberries,^  and  a  Parliament  in  every  village,  there 
is  nothing  yet  got !  — 

These  things  look  sti-ange,  truly ;  and  are  not  such 
as  we  commonly  speculate  upon.  But  we  are  fallen 
into  strange  times ;  these  things  will  require  to  be 
speculated  upon  ;  to  be  rendered  practicable,  to  be  in 
some  way  put  in  practice.  These,  and  many  others. 
On  all  hands  of  us,  there  is  the  announcement,  audible 
enough,  that  the  old  Empire  of  Routine  has  ended; 
that  to  say  a  thing  has  long  been,  is  no  reason  for  its 
continuing  to  be.  The  things  which  have  been  are 
fallen  into  decay,  are  fallen  into  incompetence ;  large 
masses  of  mankind,  in  every  society  of  our  Europe, 
are  no  longer  capable  of  living  at  all  by  the  things 
which  have  been.  When  millions  of  men  can  no  longer 
by  their  utmost  epcertion  gain  food  for  themselves,  and 
'  the  third  man  for  thirty-six  weeks  each  year  is  short 
of  third-rate  potatoes,'  the  things  which  have  been 
must  decidedly  prepare  to  alter  themselves  !  —  I  will 
now  quit  this  of  the  organisation  of  Men  of  Letters. 

Alas,  the  evil  that  pressed  heaviest  on  those  Liter- 
ary Heroes  of  ours  was  not  the  want  of  organisation 
for  Men  of    Letters,  but  a  far  deeper  one  ;    out  of 

^  Give  you  a  reason  on  compulsion  !  if  reasons  were  as  plenti- 
ful as  blackberries,  I  would  give  no  man  a  reason  upon  compul- 
sion, I.   /  Hen.  IV,  II,  iv,  264  ff. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         237 

which,  indeed,  this  and  so  many  other  evils  for  the 
Literary  Man,  and  for  all  men,  had,  as  from  their 
fountain,  taken  rise.  That  our  Hero  as  Man  of  Let- 
ters had  to  travel  without  highway,  companionless, 
through  an  inorganic  chaos,  —  and  to  leave  his  own 
life  and  faculty  lying  there,  as  a  partial  contribution 
towards  inishing  some  highway  through  it :  this,  had 
not  his  faculty  itself  been  so  perverted  and  paralysed, 
he  might  have  put-up  with,  might  have  considered  to 
be  but  the  common  lot  of  Heroes.  His  fatal  misery 
was  the  spiritual  paralysis,  so  we  may  name  it,  of 
the  Age  in  which  his  life  lay ;  whereby  his  life  too,  do 
what  he  might,  was  half -paralysed !  The  Eighteenth 
was  a  Sceptical  Century  ;  in  which  little  word  there 
is  a  whole  Pandora's  ^  Box  of  miseries.  Scepticism 
means  not  intellectual  Doubt  alone,  but  moral  Doubt ; 
all  sorts  of  iTifidelity,  insincerity,  spiritual  paralysis. 
Perhaps,  in  few  centuries  that  one  could  specify  since 
tlie  world  began,  was  a  life  of  Heroism  more  difficult 
for  a  man.  That  was  not  an  age  of  Faith,  —  an  age 
of  Heroes  !  The  very  possibility  of  Heroism  had  been, 
as  it  were,  formally  abnegated  in  the  minds  of  all. 
Heroism  was  gone  forever ;  Triviality,  Formulism 
and  Commonplace  were  come  forever.  The  '  age  of 
miracles  '  had  been,  or  perhaps  had  not  been  ;  but 
it  was  not  any  longer.  An  effete  world  ;  wherein 
Wonder,  Greatness,  Godhood  could  not  now  dweU ;  — 
in  one  word,  a  godless  world ! 

^  In  Greek  mythology,  the  first  woman  on  earth.  To  her  the 
gods  gave  a  box  containing  all  human  blessings;  but  curiosity 
led  her  to  open  the  box,  and  all  the  blessings  flew  away  except 
hope.  According  to  another  version  the  box  was  full  of  miseries, 
which  Pandora  let  loose  on  the  world. 


238  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

How  mean,  dwarfish  are  their  ways  of  thinking,  in 
this  time,  —  compared  not  with  the  Christian  Shak- 
speares  and  Miltons,  but  with  the  old  Pagan  Skakls, 
with  any  species  of  believing  men !  The  living  Tree 
Igdrasil,  with  the  melodious  prophetic  waving  of  its 
world-wide  boughs,  deep-rooted  as  Hela,  has  died- 
out  into  the  clanking  of  a  World-MACHINE.  '  Tree  ' 
and  '  Machine : '  contrast  these  two  things.  I,  for 
my  share,  declare  the  world  to  be  no  machine  I  I 
say  that  it  does  not  go  by  wheel-and-pinion  '  mo- 
tives,' self-interests,  checks,  balances  ;  that  there  is 
something  far  other  in  it  than  the  clank  of  spinning- 
jennies,  and  parliamentary  majorities ;  and,  on  the 
whole,  that  it  is  not  a  machine  at  all !  —  The  old 
Norse  Heathen  had  a  truer  notion  of  God's-world  than 
these  poor  Machine-Sceptics :  the  old  Heathen  Norse 
were  sincere  men.  But  for  these  poor  Sceptics  there 
was  no  sincerity,  no  truth.  Half-truth  and  hearsay  was 
called  truth.  Truth,  for  most  men,  meant  plausibility; 
to  be  measured  by  the  number  of  votes  you  could  get. 
They  had  lost  any  notion  that  sincerity  was  possible, 
or  of  what  sincerity  was.  How  many  Plausibilities 
asking,  with  unaffected  surprise  and  the  air  of  of- 
fended virtue.  What !  am  not  I  sincere  ?  Spiritual 
Paralysis,  I  say,  nothing  left  but  a  Mechanical  life,  was 
the  characteristic  of  that  century.  For  the  common 
man,  unless  happily  he  stood  below  his  century  and 
belonged  to  another  prior  one,  it  was  impossible  to  be 
a  Believer,  a  Hero ;  he  lay  buried,  unconscious,  under 
these  baleful  influences.  To  the  strongest  man,  only 
with  infinite  struggle  and  confusion  was  it  possible  to 
work  himself  half-loose ;  and  lead  as  it  were,  in  an 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         239 

enchanted,  most  tragical  way,  a  spiritual  cleath-in-life, 
and  be  a  Half -Hero  ! 

Scepticism  is  tlie  name  we  give  to  all  this ;  as  the 
chief  symptom,  as  the  chief  origin  of  all  this.  Concern- 
ing which  so  much  were  to  be  said  !  It  would  take  many 
Discourses,  not  a  small  fraction  of  one  Discourse,  to 
state  what  one  feels  about  that  Eighteenth  Century 
and  its  ways.  As  indeed  this^  and  the  like  of  this, 
which  we  now  call  Scepticism,  is  precisely  the  black 
malady  and  life-foe,  against  which  aU  teaching  and 
discoursing  since  man's  life  began  has  directed  itself : 
the  battle  of  Belief  against  Unbelief  is  the  never- 
ending  battle !  Neither  is  it  in  the  way  of  crimination 
that  one  would  wish  to  speak.  Scepticism,  for  that 
century,  we  must  consider  as  the  decay  of  old  ways 
of  believing,  the  preparation  afar  off  for  new  better 
and  wider  ways,  —  an  inevitable  thing.  We  will  not 
blame  men  for  it ;  we  will  lament  their  hard  fate. 
We  will  miderstand  that  destruction  of  old  Jornis  is 
not  destruction  of  everlasting  substances  ;  that  Scepti- 
cism, as  sorrowful  and  hateful  as  we  see  it,  is  not  an 
end  but  a  beginning. 

The  other  day  speaking,  without  prior  purpose  that 
way,  of  Bentham's  theory  of  man  and  man's  life,  I 
chanced  to  call  it  a  more  beggarly  one  than  Mahomet's. 
I  am  bound  to  say,  now  when  it  is  once  uttered,  that 
such  is  my  deliberate  opinion.  Not  that  one  would 
mean  offence  against  the  man  Jeremy  Benthara,  or 
those  who  respect  and  believe  him.  Bentham  himself, 
and  even  the  creed  of  Bentham,  seems  to  me  com- 
paratively worthy  of  praise.  It  is  a  determinate  being 
what  aU  the  world,  in  a  cowardly  half-and-half  manner, 


240  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

was  tending  to  be.  Let  us  have  the  crisis ;  we  shall 
either  have  death  or  the  cure.  1  call  this  gross,  steam- 
engine  Utilitarianism  an  approach  towards  new  Faith. 
It  was  a  laying-down  of  cant;  a  saying  to  oneself: 
"  Well  then,  this  world  is  a  dead  iron  machine,  the 
god  of  it  Gravitation  and  selfish  Hunger  ;  let  us  sse 
what,  by  checking  and  balancing,  and  good  adjust- 
ment of  tooth  and  pinion,  can  be  made  of  it ! " 
Benthamism  has  something  complete,  manful,  in  such 
fearless  committal  of  itself  to  what  it  finds  true ; 
you  may  call  it  Heroic,  though  a  Heroism  with  its 
eyes  put  out !  It  is  the  culminating  point,  and  fear- 
less ultimatum,  of  what  lay  in  the  half-and-half  state, 
pervading  man's  whole  existence  in  that  Eighteenth 
Century.  It  seems  to  me,  all  deniers  of  Godhood,  and 
all  lip-believers  of  it,  are  bound  to  be  Benthamites, 
if  they  have  courage  and  honesty.  Benthamism  is  an 
eyeless  Heroism :  the  Human  Species,  like  a  hapless 
blinded  Samson  grinding  in  the  Philistine  Mill,  clasps 
convulsively  the  pillars  of  its  Mill ;  brings  huge  ruin 
down,  but  ultimately  deliverance  withal.  Of  Bentham 
I  meant  to  say  no  harm. 

But  this  I  do  say,  and  would  wish  all  men  to  know 
and  lay  to  heart,  that,  he  who  discerns  nothing  but 
Mechanism  in  the  Universe  has  in  the  fatalest  way 
missed  the  secret  of  the  Universe  altogether.  That  all 
Godhood  should  vanish  out  of  men's  conception  of  this 
Universe  seems  to  me  precisely  the  most  brutal  error, 
—  I  will  not  disparage  Heathenism  by  calling  it  a 
Heathen  error,  —  that  men  could  faU  into.  It  is  not 
true  ;  it  is  false  at  the  very  heart  of  it.  A  man  who 
thinks  so  will  think  wrong  about  aU  things  in  the 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS  241 

world  ;  this  original  sin  wiU  vitiate  all  other  conclu- 
sions he  can  form.  One  might  call  it  the  most  lament- 
able of  Delusions,  —  not  forgetting  Witchcraft  itself ! 
Witchcraft  worshipped  at  least  a  living  Devil ;  but 
this  worships  a  dead  iron  Devil ;  no  God,  not  even  a 
Devil!  —  Whatsoever  is  noble,  divine,  inspired,  drops 
thereby  out  of  life.  There  remains  everywhere  in  life 
a  despicable  caput-mortuum ;  the  mechanical  hull,  aU 
soul  fled  out  of  it.  How  can  a  man  act  heroically  ? 
The  '  Doctrine  of  Motives '  will  teach  him  that  it  is, 
under  more  or  less  disguise,  nothing  but  a  wretched 
love  of  Pleasure,  fear  of  Pain ;  that  Hunger,  of  ap- 
plause, of  cash,  of  whatsoever  victual  it  may  be,  is  the 
ultimate  fact  of  man's  life.  Atheism,  in  brief ;  —  which 
does  indeed  frightfully  punish  itseK.  The  man,  I  say, 
is  become  spiritually  a  paralytic  man ;  this  godlike 
Universe  a  dead  mechanical  steamengine,  all  working 
by  motives,  checks,  balances,  and  I  know  not  what ; 
wherein,  as  in  the  detestable  belly  of  some  Phalaris'-^ 
Bull  of  his  own  contriving,  he  the  poor  Phalaris  sits 
miserably  dying ! 

BeHef  I  define  to  be  the  healthy  act  of  a  man's 
mind.  It  is  a  mysterious  indescribable  process,  that 
of  getting  to  believe  ;  —  indescribable,  as  aU  vital  acts 
are.  We  have  our  mind  given  us,  not  that  it  may  cavil 
and  argue,  but  that  it  may  see  into  something,  give 
us  clear  belief  and  imderstanding  about  something, 
whereon  we  are  then  to  proceed  to  act.  Doubt,  truly, 
is  not  itself  a  crime.    Certainly  we  do  not  rush  out, 

^  A  Sicilian  tyrant,  sixth  century,  B.  c.  The  brazen  bull  de- 
vised for  roasting  his  enemies  was  first  tried  on  its  inventor, 
Perillus  (not  on  Phalaris,  as  in  the  text). 


242  LECTURES    ON  HEROES 

clutch-up  the  first  thing  we  find,  and  straightway  be- 
lieve that !  All  manner  of  doubt,  inquiry,  o-Kei/'is  as  it 
is  named,  about  all  manner  of  objects,  dwells  in  every 
reasonable  mind.  It  is  the  mystic  working  of  the  mind, 
on  the  object  it  is  getting  to  know  and  believe.  Belief 
comes  out  of  all  this,  above  ground,  like  the  tree  from 
its  hidden  roots.  But  now  if,  even  on  common  things, 
we  require  that  a  man  keep  his  doubts  silent,  and  not 
babble  of  them  till  they  in  some  measure  become  affirma- 
tions or  denials ;  how  much  more  in  regard  to  the  high- 
est things,  impossible  to  speak-of  in  words  at  all !  That 
a  man  parade  his  doubt,  and  get  to  imagine  that  de- 
bating and  logic  (which  means  at  best  only  the  man- 
ner of  telling  us  your  thought,  your  belief  or  disbelief, 
about  a  thing)  is  the  triumph  and  true  work  of  what 
intellect  he  has  :  alas,  this  is  as  if  you  should  overturn 
the  tree,  and  instead  of  green  boughs,  leaves  and  fruits, 
show  us  ugly  taloned  roots  turned-up  into  the  air,  — 
and  no  growth,  only  death  and  misery  going-on  ! 

For  the  Scepticism,  as  I  said,  is  not  intellectual  only  ; 
it  is  moral  also ;  a  chronic  atrophy  and  disease  of  the 
whole  soul.  A  man  lives  by  believing  something ;  not 
by  debating  and  arguing  about  many  things.  A  sad 
case  for  him  when  all  that  he  can  manage  to  believe 
is  something  he  can  button  in  his  pocket,  and  with  one 
or  the  other  organ  eat  and  digest !  Lower  than  that 
he  will  not  get.  We  call  those  ages  in  which  he  gets 
so  low  the  mournfulest,  sickest  and  meanest  of  all  ages. 
The  world's  heart  is  palsied,  sick :  how  can  any  limb 
of  it  be  whole  ?  Genuine  Acting  ceases  in  all  depart- 
ments of  the  world's  work  ;  dextrous  Similitude  of  Act- 
ing begins.  The  world's  wages  are  pocketed,  the  world's 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         243 

work  is  not  done.  Heroes  have  gone-out ;  Quacks  have 
come-m.  Accordingly,  what  Century,  since  the  end  of 
the  Roman  world,  which  also  was  a  time  of  scepticism, 
simulacra  and  universal  decadence,  so  abounds  with 
Quacks  as  that  Eighteenth  ?  Consider  them,  with  their 
^tumid  sentimental  vapouring  about  virtue,  benevolence, 
—  the  wretched  Quack-squadron,  Cagliostro  ^  at  the 
head  of  them !  Few  men  were  without  quackery ;  they 
had  got  to  consider  it  a  necessary  ingredient  and  amal- 
gam for  truth.  Chatham,^  our  brave  Chatham  him- 
self, comes  down  to  the  House,  all  wrapt  and  ban- 
daged ;  he  '  has  crawled  out  in  great  bodily  suffering,' 
and  so  on  ;  — forgets,  says  Walpole,  that  he  is  acting 
the  sick  man ;  in  the  fire  of  debate,  snatches  his  arm 
from  the  sling,  and  oratorically  swings  and  brandishes 
it!  Chatham  himself  lives  the  strangest  mimetic  life, 
half -hero,  half -quack,  all  along.  For  indeed  the  world 
is  full  of  dupes  ;  and  you  have  to  gain  the  loorlcVs  suf- 
frage !  How  the  duties  of  the  world  will  be  done  in 
that  case,  what  quantities  of  error,  which  means  fail- 
ure, which  means  sorrow  and  misery,  to  some  and  to 
many,  will  gradually  accumulate  in  all  provinces  of  the 
world's  business,  we  need  not  compute. 

It  seems  to  me,  you  lay  your  finger  here  on  the 
heart  of  the  world's  maladies,  when  you  call  it  a  Scep- 
tical World.  An  insincere  world  ;  a  godless  untruth 
of  a  world !  It  is  out  of  this,  as  I  consider,  that  the 

1  See  p.  61,  n.  2. 

2  The  elder  Pitt  (1708-1778),  "  the  great  Commoner."  A  few- 
days  before  his  death  he  delivered  a  fiery  speech  in  denunciation 
of  the  peace  with  France  and  the  recognition  of  the  United 
States,  and  fainted  as  he  finished. 


244  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

whole  tribe  of  social  pestilences,  French  Revolutions, 
Chartisms,^  and  what  not,  have  derived  their  being, 
—  their  chief  necessity  to  be.  This  must  alter.  Till 
this  alter,  nothing  can  beneficially  alter.  My  one  hope 
of  the  world,  my  inexpugnable  consolation  in  looking 
at  the  miseries  of  the  world,  is  that  this  is  alter- 
ing. Here  and  there  one  does  now  find  a  man  who 
knows,  as  of  old,  that  this  world  is  a  Truth,  and  no 
Plausibility  and  Falsity;  that  he  himself  is  alive,  not 
dead  or  paralytic  ;  and  that  the  world  is  alive,  instinct 
with  Godhood,  beautiful  and  awful,  even  as  in  the 
beginning  of  days !  One  man  once  knowing  this,  many 
men,  all  men,  must  by  and  by  come  to  know  it.  It 
lies  there  clear,  for  whosoever  will  take  the  spectacles 
off  his  eyes  and  honestly  look,  to  know !  For  such  a 
man  the  Unbelieving  Century,  with  its  unblessed  Pro- 
ducts, is  already  past ;  a  new  century  is  already  come. 
The  old  unblessed  Products  and  Performances,  as 
solid  as  they  look,  are  Phantasms,  preparing  speedily 
to  vanish.  To  this  and  the  other  noisy,  very  gi-eat- 
looking  Simulacrum  with  the  whole  world  huzzahing 
at  its  heels,  he  can  say,  composedly  stepping  aside  : 
Thou  art  not  true  ;  thou  art  not  extant,  only  semblant ; 
go  thy  way  !  —  Yes,  hollow  Formulism,  gross  Ben- 
thamism, and  other  unheroic  atheistic  Insincerity  is 
visibly  and  even  rapidly  declining.  An  mibelieving 
Eighteenth  Century  is  but  an  exception,  —  such  as  now 
and  then  occurs.    I  prophesy  that  the  world  will  once 

'  Chartism  ;  a  radical  reform  movement  (1838-1848)  named 
from  the  "  People's  Charter,"  demanding  certain  changes  in  the 
parliamentary  system.  Carlyle's  Essai/  on  Chartism  (1839)  is  one 
of  the  best  known  and  most  vijrorous  of  his  shorter  works. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         245 

'  more  become  sincere  ;  a  believing  world  ;  with  many 
Heroes  in  it,  a  heroic  world  !  It  will  then  be  a  victori- 
ous world  ;  never  till  then. 

Or  indeed  what  of  the  world  and  its  victories  ?  Men 
speak  too  much  about  the  world.  Each  one  of  us  here, 
let  the  world  go  how  it  will,  and  be  victorious  or  not 
victorious,  has  he  not  a  Life  of  his  own  to  lead  ?  One 
Life  ;  a  little  gleam  of  Time  between  two  Eternities  ; 
no  second  chance  to  us  for  evermore  !  It  were  well  for 
us  to  live  not  as  fools  and  simulacra,  but  as  wise  and 
realities.  The  world's  being  saved  will  not  save  us  ; 
nor  the  world's  being  lost  destroy  us.  We  should  look 
to  ourselves  :  there  is  great  merit  here  in  the  '  duty  of 
staying  at  home  ' !  And,  on  the  whole,  to  say  truth,  I 
never  heard  of  '  worlds  '  being  '  saved  '  in  any  other 
way.  That  mania  of  saving  worlds  is  itself  a  piece  of 
the  Eighteenth  Century  with  its  windy  sentimentalism. 
Let  us  not  follow  it  too  far.  For  the  saving  of  the 
world  I  will  trust  confidently  to  the  Maker  of  the 
world ;  and  look  a  little  to  my  own  saving,  which  I 
am  more  competent  to !  —  In  brief,  for  the  world's 
sake,  and  for  our  own,  we  will  rejoice  greatly  that 
Scepticism,  Insincerity,  Mechanical  Atheism,  with  all 
their  poison-dews,  are  going,  and  as  good  as  gone.  — 

Now  it  was  under  such  conditions,  in  those  times  of 
Johnson,  ^  that  our  Men  of  Letters  had  to  live.  Times 
in  which  there  was  properly  no  truth  in  life.  Old 
truths  had  fallen  nigh  dumb  :  the  new  lay  yet  hidden, 
not  trying  to  speak.  That  Man's  Life  here  below  was 
a  Sincerity  and  Fact,  and  would  forever  continue  such, 
no  new  intimation,  in  that  dusk  of  the  world,  had  yet 
1  1709-1784. 


246  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

dawued.  No  intimation  ;  not  even  any  French  Revolu- 
tion, —  which  we  define  to  be  a  Truth  once  more, 
though  a  Truth  clad  in  hellfire !  How  different  was 
the  Luther's  pilgrimage,  with  its  assured  goal,  from 
the  Johnson's,  girt  with  mere  traditions,  suppositions, 
grown  now  incredible,  unintelligible  !  Mahomet's  For- 
mulas were  of  '  wood  waxed  and  oiled,'  and  could  be 
hunit  out  of  one's  way :  poor  Johnson's  were  far  more 
difficult  to  burn.  —  The  strong  man  w^ill  ever  find 
tvo7'k,  which  means  difficulty,  pain,  to  the  full  measure 
of  his  strength.  But  to  make-out  a  victory,  in  those 
circmnstances  of  our  poor  Hero  as  Man  of  Letters,  was 
perhaps  more  difficidt  than  in  any.  Not  obstruction, 
disorganisation.  Bookseller  Osborne  ^  and  Fourpence- 
halfpenny  a  day  ;  not  this  alone  ;  but  the  light  of  his 
own  soul  was  taken  from  him.  No  landmark  on  the 
Earth  ;  and,  alas,  what  is  that  to  having  no  loadstar  in 
the  Pleaven !  We  need  not  w^onder  that  none  of  those 
Three  men  rose  to  victory.  That  they  fought  truly  is 
the  highest  praise.  With  a  mournful  sjTiipathy  we 
will  contemplate,  if  not  three  living  victorious  Heroes, 
as  I  said,  the  Tombs  of  three  fallen  Heroes !  They 
fell  for  us  too  ;  making  a  way  for  us.  There  are  the 
mountains  which  they  hurled  abroad  in  their  confused 
War  of  the  Giants  ;  under  which,  their  strength  and 
life  spent,  they  now  lie  buried. 

.1  have  already  w^ritten  of  these  tlu-ee  Literary 
Heroes,  expressly  or  incidental^ ;  what  I  suppose  is 
known  to  most,  of  you ;  what  need  not  be  spoken  or 

^  He  employed  Johnson  in  cataloguing  a  library  (1742)  and 
was  knocked  down  by  Johnson  for  insolent  behavior. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         247 

written  a  second  time.  They  concern  us  here  as  the 
singular  JProjjhets  of  that  singular  age ;  for  such  they 
virtually  were ;  and  the  aspect  they  and  their  world 
exhibit,  under  this  point  of  view,  might  lead  us  into 
reflections  enough  !  I  call  them,  all  three,  Genuine 
Men  more  or  less ;  faithfully,  for  most  part  uncon- 
sciously, struggling,  to  be  genuine,  and  plant  them- 
selves on  the  everlasting  truth  of  things.  This  to  a 
degree  that  eminently  distinguishes  them  from  the  poor 
artificial  mass  of  their  contemporaries  ;  and  renders 
them  worthy  to  be  considered  as  Speakers,  in  some 
measure,  of  the  everlasting  truth,  as  Prophets  in  that 
age  of  theirs.  By  Nature  herself  a  noble  necessity  was 
laid  on  them  to  be  so.  They  were  men  of  such  magni- 
tude that  they  could  not  live  on  unrealities,  —  clouds, 
froth  and  all  inanity  gave-way  under  them :  there  was 
no  footing  for  them  but  on  firm  earth  ;  no  rest  or 
regidar  motion  for  them,  if  they  got  not  footing  there. 
To  a  certain  extent,  they  were  Sons  of  Nature  once 
more  in  an  age  of  Artifice ;  once  more.  Original  IVIen. 
As  for  Johnson,  I  have  always  considered  him  to  be, 
by  nature,  one  of  our  great  English  souls.  A  strong 
and  noble  man ;  so  much  left  undeveloped  in  him  to 
the  last :  in  a  kindlier  element  what  might  he  not  have 
been,  —  Poet,  Priest,  sovereign  Ruler !  On  the  whole, 
a  man  must  not  complain  of  his  '  element,'  of  his 
'  time, '  or  the  like  ;  it  is  thriftless  work  doing  so. 
His  time  is  bad :  well  then,  he  is  there  to  make  it 
better  !  —  Johnson's  youth  was  poor,  isolated,  hopeless, 
very  miserable.  Indeed,  it  does  not  seem  possible  that, 
in  any  the  favourablest  outward  circumstances,  John- 
son's life  could  have  been  other  than  a  painful  one. 


248  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

The  world  might  have  had  more  of  profitahle  worh 
out  of  him,  or  less  ;  but  his  effort  against  the  world's 
work  coidd  never  have  been  a  light  one.  Nature, 
in  return  for  his  nobleness  had  said  to  him.  Live 
in  an  element  of  diseased  sorrow.  Nay,  perhaps  the 
sorrow  and  the  nobleness  were  intimately  and  even 
inseparably  connected  with  each  other.  At  all  events, 
poor  Johnson  had  to  go  about  girt  with  continual 
hypochondria,  physical  and  spiritual  pain.  Like  a 
Hercules  with  the  burning  Nessus'-shirt  ^  on  him,  which 
shoots-in  on  him  dull  incurable  misery :  the  Nessus'- 
shirt  not  to  be  stript-off ,  which  is  his  own  natural  skin ! 
In  this  manner  he  had  to  live.  Figure  him  there,  with 
his  scrofulous  diseases,  with  his  great  greedy  heart,  and 
unspeakable  chaos  of  thoughts ;  stalking  mournful 
as  a  stranger  in  this  Earth  ;  eagerly  devouring  what 
spiritual  thing  he  could  come  at :  school-languages  and 
other  merely  grammatical  stuff,  if  there  were  nothing 
better !  The  largest  soul  that  was  in  all  England  ; 
and  provision  made  for  it  of  '  fourpence-half-penny 
a  day.'  Yet  a  giant  invincible  soul ;  a  true  man's. 
One  remembers  always  that  story  of  the  shoes  at 
Oxford :  ^  the  rough,  seamy-faced,  rawboned  College 
Servitor  stalking  about,  in  winter-season,  with  his  shoes 
worn-out ;  how  the  charitable  Gentleman  Commoner 
secretly  places  a  new  pair  at  his  door ;  and  the  raw- 
boned  Servitor,  lifting  them,  looking  at  them  near, 

'  A  robe  dipped  in  the  poisoned  blood  of  the  Centaur  Nessus, 
which,  causing  great  pain,  was  torn  off,  stripping  off  the  flesli 
with  it. 

2  Johnson  was  intermittently  resident  at  Oxford  for  three 
years,  beginning  in  1728.  See  the  story  of  the  shoes,  under  the 
year  1729  in  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson. 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON 
From  the  painting  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS ,       249 

with  his  dim  eyes,  with  what  thoughts,  —  pitches 
them  out  of  window !  Wet  feet,  mud,  frost,  hunger  or 
what  you  will ;  but  not  beggary :  we  cannot  stand 
beggary !  Rude  stubborn  self-helj)  here  ;  a  whole  world 
of  squalor,  rudeness,  confused  misery  and  want,  yet  of 
nobleness  and  manfuhiess  withal.  It  is  a  type  of  the 
man's  life,  this  pitching-away  of  the  shoes.  An  original 
man  ;  —  not  a  secondhand,  borrowing  or  begging  man. 
Let  us  stand  on  our  own  basis,  at  any  rate !  On  such 
shoes  as  we  ourselves  can  get.  On  frost  and  mud,  if 
you  will,  but  honestly  on  that;  —  on  the  reality  and 
substance  which  Nature  gives  us,  not  on  the  semblance, 
on  the  thing  she  has  given  another  than  us !  — 

And  yet  with  all  this  rugged  pride  of  manhood  and 
self-help,  was  there  ever  soul  more  tenderly  affection- 
ate, loyally  submissive  to  what  was  really  higher  than 
he  ?  Great  souls  are  always  loyally  submissive,  rever- 
ent to  what  is  over  them  ;  only  small  mean  souls  are 
otherwise.  I  could  not  find  a  better  proof  of  what  I 
said  the  other  day,  That  the  sincere  man  was  by 
nature  the  obedient  man  ;  that  only  in  a  World  of 
Heroes  was  there  loyal  Obedience  to  the  Heroic.  The 
essence  of  originality  is  not  that  it  be  new :  Johnson 
believed  altogether  in  the  old ;  he  found  the  old 
opinions  credible  for  him,  fit  for  him  ;  and  in  a  right 
heroic  manner  lived  under  them.  He  is  well  worth 
study  in  regard  to  that.  For  we  are  to  say  that  John- 
son was  far  other  than  a  mere  man  of  words  and 
formulas  ;  he  was  a  man  of  truths  and  facts.  He  stood 
by  the  old  formulas ;  the  happier  was  it  for  him  that 
he  could  so  stand:  but  in  all  formulas  that  he  could 
stand  by,  there  needed  to  be   a  most  genuine  sub- 


250        .  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

stance.  Very  curious  how,  in  that  poor  Paper-age, 
so  barren,  artificial,  thick-quilted  with  Pedantries, 
Hearsays,  the  great  Fact  of  this  Universe  glared  in, 
forever  wonderful,  indubitable,  unspeakable,  divine- 
infernal,  upon  this  man  too !  How  he  harmonised  his 
Formulas  with  it,  how  he  managed  at  aU  under  such 
circumstances  :  that  is  a  thing  worth  seeing.  A  thing 
'  to  be  looked  at  with  reverence,  with  pity,  with  awe.' ' 
That  Church  of  St.  Clement  Danes,'-^  where  Johnson 
still  worshipped  in  the  era  of  Voltaire,  is  to  me  a 
venerable  place. 

It  was  in  virtue  of  his  sincerity,  of  bis  speaking 
still  in  some  sort  from  the  heart  of  Nature,  though  in 
current  artificial  dialect,  that  Johnson  was  a  Pro- 
phet. Are  not  all  dialects  '  artificial '  ?  Artificial  things 
are  not  all  false  ;  —  nay  every  true  Product  of  Nature 
will  infallibly  shape  itself ;  we  may  say  all  artificial 
things  are,  at  the  starting  of  them,  true.  What  we 
call  '  Formulas  '  are  not  in  their  origin  bad  ;  they  are 
indispensably  good.  Formula  is  viethod,  habitude ; 
found  wherever  man  is  found.  Formulas  fashion  them- 
selves as  Paths  do,  as  beaten  Highways,  leading  to- 
wards some  sacred  or  high  object,  whither  many  men 
are  bent.  Consider  it.  One  man,  full  of  heartfelt 
earnest  impulse,  finds-out  a  way  of  doing  somewhat,  — 
were  it  of  uttering  his  soul's  reverence  for  the  High- 
est, were  it  but  of  fitly  saluting  his  fellow-man.  An 
inventor  was  needed  to  do  that,  a  j^oet ;  he  has  articu- 

^  Quotation  from  Carlyle  himself,  Essay  on  BoswelVs  Life  of 
Johnson. 

2  III  The  Strand,  London  ;  still  one  of  the  "sights"  of  the 
city  for  Johnson's  sake. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         251 

lated  the  dim-struggling  thought  that  dwelt  in  his 
own  and  many  hearts.  This  is  his  way  of  doing  that ; 
these  are  his  footsteps,  the  beginning  of  a  '  Path.' 
And  now  see  :  the  second  man  travels  naturally  in  the 
footsteps  of  his  foregoer,  it  is-  the  easiest  method.  In 
tiie  footsteps  of  his  foregoer ;  yet  with  improvements, 
with  changes  where  such  seem  good  ;  at  all  events 
with  enlargements,  the  Path  ever  widening  itself  as 
more  travel  it ;  —  till  at  last  there  is  a  broad  High- 
way whereon  the  whole  world  may  travel  and  drive. 
While  there  remains  a  City  or  Shrine,  or  any  Reality 
to  drive  to,  at  the  farther  end,  the  Highway  shall  be 
right  welcome !  When  the  City  is  gone,  we  will  for- 
sake the  Highway.  In  this  manner  all  Institutions, 
Practices,  Regulated  Things  in  the  world  have  come 
into  existence,  and  gone  out  of  existence.  Formidas 
all  begin  by  being  J'ldl  of  substance ;  you  may  call 
them  the  skin,  the  articulation  into  shape,  into  limbs 
and  skin,  of  a  substance  that  is  already  there :  they 
had  not  been  there  otherwise.  Idols,  as  we  said,  are 
not  idolatrous  till  they  become  doubtful,  empty  for 
the  worshipper's  heart;  Much  as  we  talk  against 
Formulas,  I  hope  no  one  of  us  is  ignorant  withal  of 
the  high  significance  of  true  Formulas ;  that  they 
were,  and  ^vill  ever  be,  the  indispensablest  furniture  of 

our  habitation  in  this  world. 

Mark,  too,  how  little  Johnson  boasts  of  his  '  sin- 
cerity.' He  has  no  suspicion  of  his  being  particidarly 
sincere,  —  of  his  being  particularly  anything  !  A  hard- 
struggling,  weary-hearted  man,  or  '  scholar '  as  he 
calls  himself,  ti-png  hard  to  get  some  honest  livelihood 
in   the   world,   not  to   starve,   but  to  live  —  without 


252  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

stealing !  A  noble  unconsciousness  is  in  him.  He 
does  not  '  engrave  Truth  on  his  watch-seal ; '  no,  but 
he  stands  by  truth,  speaks  by  it,  works  and  lives  by 
it.  Thus  it  ever  is.  Think  of  it  once  more.  The  man 
whom  Nature  has  appointed  to  do  great  things  is, 
first  of  all,  furnished  with  that  openness  to  Nature 
which  renders  him  incapable  of  ,being  insincere  !  To 
his  large,  open,  deep-feeling  heart  Nature  is  a  Fact : 
all  hearsay  is  hearsay  ;  the  unspeakable  greatness  of 
this  Mystery  of  Life,  let  him  acknowledge  it  or  not, 
nay  even  though  he  seem  to  forget  it  or  deny  it,  is 
ever  present  to  him,  — fearful  and  wonderful,  on  this 
hand  and  on  that.  He  has  a  basis  of  sincerity  ;  unre- 
cognised, because  never  questioned  or  capable  of  ques- 
tion. Mirabeau,  Mahomet,  Cromwell,  Napoleon :  all 
the  Great  Men  I  ever  heard-of  have  this  as  the  pri- 
mary material  of  them.  Innumerable  commonplace 
men  are  debating,  are  tallying  everywhere  their  com- 
monplace doctrines,  which  they  have  learned  by  logic, 
by  rote,  at  secondhand  :  to  that  kind  of  man  all  this 
is  still  nothing.  He  must  have  truth  ;  truth  which  he 
feels  to  be  true.  How  shall  he  stand  otherwise  ?  His 
whole  soul,  at  all  moments,  in  all  ways,  tells  him  that 
there  is  no  standing.  He  is  under  the  noble  necessity 
of  being  true.  Johnson's  way  of  thinking  about  this 
world  is  not  mine,  any  more  than  Mahomet's  was  :  but 
I  recognise  the  everlasting  element  of  heart-s/ wceri7?/ 
in  both ;  and  see  with  pleasure  how  neither  of ,  them 
remains  ineffectual.  Neither  of  them  is  as  choff  sown  ; 
in  both  of  them  is  something  which  the  seed -field  will 
grow. 

Johnson  was  a  Prophet  to  his  people ;  preached  a 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         253 

• 

Gospel  to  them,  —  as  all  like  him  always  do.  The 
highest  Gospel  he  preached  we  may  describe  as  a  kind 
of  Moral  Prudence :  '  in  a  world  where  much  is  to  be 
done,  and  little  is  to  be  known,'  see  how  you  will  do  it ! 
A  thing  well  worth  preaching.  '  A  world  where  much 
is  to  be  done,  and  little  is  to  be  known : '  do  not  sink 
yourselves  in  boundless  bottomless  abysses  of  Doubt,  of 
wretched  god-forgetting  Unbelief  ;  —  you  were  miser- 
able then,  powerless,  mad :  how  could  you  do  or  work 
at  all  ?  Such  Gospel  Johnson  preached  and  taught ;  — 
coupled,  theoretically  and  practically,  with  this  other 
great  Gospel,  '  Clear  your  mind  of  Cant ! '  Have  no 
trade  with  Cant :  stand  on  the  cold  mud  in  the  frosty 
weather,  but  let  it  be  in  your  own  real  torn  shoes : 
'  that  will  be  better  for  you,'  as  Mahomet  says  I  I  call 
this,  I  call  these  two  things  joined  together,  a  great 
Gospel,  the  greatest  perhaps  that  was  possible  at  that 
time. 

Johnson's  Writings,  which  once  had  such  currency 
and  celebrity,  are  now  as  it  were  disowned  by  the 
young  generation.  It  is  not  wonderful ;  Johnson's 
opinions  are  fast  becoming  obsolete :  but  his  style  of 
thinking  and  of  living,  we  may  hope,  will  never  be- 
come obsolete.  I  find  in  Johnson's  Books  the  indis- 
putablest  traces  of  a  great  intellect  and  great  heart ; 
—  ever  welcome,  under  what  obstructions  and  perver- 
sions soever.  They  are  sincere  words,  those  of  his  ;  he 
means  things  by  them.  A  wondrous  buckram  style,  — 
the  best  he  could  get  to  then  ;  a  measured  grandilo- 
quence, stepping  or  rather  stalking  along  in  a  very 
solemn  way,  grown  obsolete  now ;  sometimes  a  tumid 
size  of  phraseology  not  in  proportion  to  the  contents 


254  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

of  it :  all  this  you  will  put-up  with.  For  the  phraseo- 
logy, tumid  or  not,  has  always  sometliing  within  it. 
So  many  beautiful  styles  and  books,  with  nothimj 
in  them  ;  —  a  man  is  a  malci^ciov  to  the  world  who 
writes  such  !  They  are  the  avoidable  kind  !  —  Had 
Johnson  left  nothing  but  his  Dictionary,  one  might 
have  traced  there  a  great  intellect,  a  genuine  man. 
Looking  to  its  clearness  of-  definition,  its  general  solid- 
ity, honesty,  insight  and  successful  method,  it  may  be 
called  the  best  of  all  Dictionaries.  There  is  in  it  a 
kind  of  architectural  nobleness  ;  it  stands  there  like  a 
great  solid  square-built  edifice,  finished,  symmetrically 
complete  :  you  judge  that  a  true  Builder  did  it. 

One  word,  in  spite  of  our  haste,  must  be  granted 
to  poor  Bozzy.^  He  passes  for  a  mean,  inflated,  glut- 
tonous creature  ;  and  was  so  in  many  senses.  Yet  the 
fact  of  his  reverence  for  Johnson  will  ever  remain 
noteworthy.  The  foolish  conceited  Scotch  Laird,  the 
most  conceited  man  of  his  time,  approaching  in  such 
awestruck  attitude  the  great  dusty  irascible  Pedagogue 
in  his  mean  garret  there :  it  is  a  genuine  reverence  for 
Excellence ;  a  worshij)  for  Heroes,  at  a  time  when 
neither  Heroes  nor  worship  were  surmised  to  exist. 
Heroes,  it  would  seem,  exist  always,  and  a  certain  wor- 
ship of  them !  We  will  also  take  the  liberty  to  deny 
altogether  that  of  the  witty  Frenchman,  that  no  man  is 
a  hero  to  his  Talet-de-chambre.^  Or  if  so,  it  is  not  the 
Hero's  blame,  but  the  Valet's :  that  his  soul,  namely,  is 

1  James  Boswell  (1740-1795);  introduced  to  Johnson  in  1763; 
published  his  Life  of  Johnson,  1791. 

-  Attributed  to  a  bewildering  number  of  French  wits,  both 
men  and  women. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS  255 

a  mean  vaIet-?>o\\\ !  He  expects  his  Hero  to  advance  in 
royal  stage-trappings,  with  measured  step,  trains  borne 
behind  him,  trumpets  sounding  before  him.  It  should 
stand  rather,  No  man  can  be  a  Grand-Monarque  to 
his  valet-de-chambre.  Strip  your  Louis  Quatorze  ^  of 
his  king-gear,  and  there  is  left  nothing  but  a  poor 
forked  radish  with  a  head  fantastically  carved ;  ^  —  ad- 
mirable to  no  valet.  The  Valet  does  not  know  a  Hero 
when  he  sees  him !  Alas,  no :  it  requires  a  kind  of 
Hero  to  do  that ;  —  and  one  of  the  world's  wants,  in 
this  as  in  other  senses,  is  for  most  part  want  of  such. 
On  the  whole,  shall  we  not  say,  that  Boswell's  ad- 
miration was  well  bestowed ;  that  he  could  have  found 
no  soul  in  all  England  so  worthy  of  bending  down  be- 
fore ?  Shall  we  not  say,  of  this  great  mournfid  John- 
son too,  that  he  guided  his  difficult  confused  existence 
wisely ;  led  it  ivell,  like  a  right- valiant  man  ?  That 
waste  chaos  of  Authorship  by  trade ;  that  waste  chaos 
of  Scepticism  in  religion  and  politics,  in  life-theory  and 
life-practice ;  in  his  poverty,  in  his  dust  and  dimness, 
with  the  sick  body  and  the  rusty  coat :  he  made  it  do 
for  him,  like  a  brave  man.  Not  wholly  without  a  load- 
star in  the  Eternal ;  he  had  still  a  loadstar,  as  the  brave 
all  need  to  have :  with  his  eye  set  on  that,  he  wotdd 
chanoe  his  course  for  nothins:  in  these  confused  vor- 
tices  of  the  lower  sea  of  Time.  '  To  the  Spirit  of  Lies, 
bearing  death  and  hunger,  he  would  in  no  wise  strike 
his  flag.'    Brave  old  Samuel :  ultimus  Romanonim  ! 

1  Louis  XIV  (b.  1633,  king  1643-1715),  the  most  magnificent 
of  French  monarchs. 

2  A  phrase  of  Falstaff's  in  description  of  Justice  Shallow.  // 
Sen.  1 V,  III,  ii,  last  speech. 


256  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

Of  Rousseau  ^  and  his  Heroism  I  cannot  say  so 
much.  He  is  not  what  I  call  a  strong  man.  A  morbid, 
excitable,  spasmodic  man ;  at  best,  intense  rather  than 
strong.  Pie  had  not  '  the  talent  of  Silence,'  an  invalu- 
able talent ;  which  few  Frenchmen,  or  indeed  men  of 
any  sort  in  these  times,  excel  in !  The  suffering  man 
ought  really  '  to  consume  his  own  smoke  ; '  there  is  no 
good  in  emitting  smoke  till  you  have  made  it  into  /?re, 
—  which,  in  the  metaphorical  sense  too,  all  smoke  is 
capable  of  becoming !  Rousseau  has  not  depth  or 
width,  not  calm  force  for  difficulty ;  the  first  character- 
istic of  true  greatness.  A  fundamental  mistake  to  call 
vehemence  and  rigidity  strength !  A  man  is  not  strong 
who  takes  conviUsion-fits  ;  though  six  men  cannot 
hold  him  then.  He  that  can  walk  under  the  heaviest 
weight  without  staggering,  he  is  the  strong  man.  We 
need  forever,  especially  in  these  loud-shrieking  days, 
to  remind  ourselves  of  that.  A  man  who  cannot  liold 
his  peace,  till  the  time  come  for  speaking  and  acting, 
is  no  right  man. 

Poor  Rousseau's  face  is  to  me  expressive  of  him. 
A  high  but  narrow  contracted  intensit}'^  in  it :  bony 
brows  ;  deep,  strait-set  eyes,  in  which  there  is  some- 
thing bewildered-looking, — bewildered,  peering  with 
lynx-eagerness.  A  face  full  of  misery,  even  ignoble 
misery,  and  also  of  the  antagonism  against  that ;  some- 
thing mean,  plebeian  there,  redeemed  only  by  inten- 
sity :  the  face  of  what  is  called  a  Fanatic,  —  a  sadly 
contracted  Hero !  We  name  him  here  because,  with 
all  his  drawbacks,  and  they  are  many,  he  has  the  first 
and  chief  characteristic  of  a  Hero :  he  is  heartily  in 
1  1712-1778. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         257 

earnest.  In  earnest,  if  ever  man  was  ;  as  none  of  these 
French  Philosophes  were.  Nay,  one  would  say,  of  an 
earnestness  too  great  for  his  otherwise  sensitive,  rather 
feeble  nature  ;  and  which  indeed  in  the  end  drove  him 
into  the  strangest  incoherences,  ahnost  delirations. 
There  had  come,  at  last,  to  be  a  kind  of  madness  in 
him  :  his  Ideas  possessed  him  like  demons ;  hurried 
him  so  about,  drove  him  over  steep  places  !  — 

The  fault  and  misery  of  Rousseau  was  what  we  easily 
name  by  a  single  word,  Egoism, ;  which  is  indeed  the 
source  a»d  summary  of  all  faults  and  miseries  what- 
soever. He  had  not  perfected  himself  into  victory 
over  mere  Desire  ;  a  mean  Hunger,  in  many  sorts,  was 
still  the  motive  principle  of  him.  I  am  afraid  he  was 
a  very  vain  man  ;  hungry  for  the  praises  of  men.  You 
remember  Genlis's  exj^erience  of  him.  She  took  Jean 
Jacques  to  the  Theatre  ;  he  bargaining  for  a  strict 
incognito,  —  "  He  would  not  be  seen  there  for  the 
world !  "  The  curtain  did  happen  nevertheless  to  be 
drawn  aside  :  the  Pit  recognised  Jean  Jacques,  but 
took  no  great  notice  of  him  !  He  expressed  the  bit- 
terest indignation ;  gloomed  all  evening,  spake  no 
other  than  surly  words.  The  glib  Countess  remained 
entirely  convinced  that  his  anger  was  not  at  being  seen, 
but  at  not  being  applauded  when  seen.  How  the  whole 
nature  of  the  man  is  poisoned ;  nothing  but  suspicion, 
self-isolation,  fierce  moody  ways !  He  could  not  live 
with  anybody.  A  man  of  some  rank  from  the  country, 
who  visited  him  often,  and  used  to  sit  with  him,  ex- 
pressing all  reverence  and  affection  for  him,  comes  one 
day;  finds  Jean  Jacques  fidl  of  the  sourest  unintel- 
ligible humour.    "  Monsieur,"  said  Jean  Jacques,  with 


258  LECTURES    ON  HEROES 

flaming  eyes,  "  I  know  why  you  come  here.  You  come 
to  see  what  a  poor  life  I  lead  ;  how  little  is  in  my  poor 
pot  that  is  boiling  there.  Well,  look  into  the  pot ! 
There  is  half  a  poimd  of  meat,  one  carrot  and  three 
onions  ;  that  is  all :  go  and  tell  the  whole  world  that, 
if  you  like,  Monsiem* !  "  —  A  man  of  this  sort  was  far 
gone.  The  whole  world  got  itself  supplied  Avith  anec- 
dotes, for  light  laughter,  for  a  certain  theatrical  in- 
terest, from  these  perversions  and  contortions  of  poor 
Jean  Jacques.  Alas,  to  him  they  were  not  laughing 
or  theatrical ;  too  real  to  him !  The  contortions  of  a 
dying  gladiator:  the  crowded  amphitheatre  looks-on 
with  entertainment ;  but  the  gladiator  is  in  agonies 
and  dying. 

And  yet  this  Rousseau,  as  we  say,  with  his  passion- 
ate appeals  to  Mothers,  with  his  Contrat-social}  with 
his  celebrations  of  Nature,  even  of  savage  life  in 
Nature,  did  once  more  touch  upon  Reality,  struggle 
towards  Reality  ;  was  doing  the  function  of  a  Prophet 
to  his  Time.  As  he  could,  and  as  the  Time  could ! 
Strangely  through  all  that  defacement,  degradation 
and  almost  madness,  there  is  in  the  inmost  heart  of 
poor  Rousseau  a  spark  of  real  heavenly  fire.  Once 
more,  out  of  the  element  of  that  withered  mocking 
Philosophism,  Scepticism  and  Persiflage,  there  has 
arisen  in  this  man  the  ineradicable  feeling  and  know- 
ledge that  this  Life  of  ours  is  true  ;  not  a  Scepticism, 
Theorem,  or  Persiflage,  but  a  Fact,  an  awful  Reality. 

^  A  treatise  on  government,  advocating  the  direct  sovereignty 
of  the  people  as  the  only  natural  and  ideal  government.  The 
drafters  of  the  American  Declaration  of  Independence  were 
largely  and  directly  indebted  to  Rousseau. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         259 

Nature  had  made  that  revelation  to  him  ;  had  ordered 
him  to  speak  it  out.  He  got  it  spoken  out ;  if  not  well 
and  clearly,  then  ill  and  dimly,  —  as  clearly  as  he 
could.  Nay  what  are  all  errors  and  perversities  of  his, 
even  those  stealings  of  ribbons,^  aimless  confused  mis- 
eries and  vagabondisms,  if  we  will  interpret  them 
kindly,  but  the  blinkard  dazzlement  and  staggerings  to 
and  fro  of  a  man  sent  on  an  errand  he  is  too  weak  for, 
by  a  path  he  cannot  yet  find  ?  Men  are  led  by  strange 
ways.  One  should  have  tolerance  for  a  man,  hope  of 
him  ;  leave  him  to  try  yet  what  he  will  do.  While  life 
lasts,  hope  lasts  for  every  man. 

Of  Rousseau's  literary  talents,  greatly  celebrated 
stiU  among  his  countrymen,  I  do  not  say  much.  His 
Books,2  like  himself,  are  what  I  call  unhealthy ;  not 
the  good  sort  of  Books.  There  is  a  sensuality  in  Rous- 
seau. Combined  with  such  an  intellectual  gift  as  his, 
it  makes  pictures  of  a  certain  gorgeous  attractiveness  : 
but  they  are  not  genuinely  poetical.  Not  white  sun- 
light :  something  operatic  ;  a  kind  of  rosepink,  arti- 
ficial bedizenment.  It  is  frequent,  or  rather  it  is  uni- 
versal, among  the  French  since  his  tune.  Madame  de 
Stael  ^  has  something  of  it ;  St.  Pierre ;  *  and  down 

^  At  the  death  of  Mme.  de  Vercellis,  in  whose  household  he 
was  au  attendant,  Rousseau,  provoked  thereto  by  his  chagrin 
at  not  being  mentioned  in  her  will,  stole  a  piece  of  ribbon  of 
slight  value.  On  being  found  in  possession  of  it  he  declared 
that  a  young  girl  of  the  household  had  given  it  to  him.  His 
remorse  at  having  brought  baseless  suspicion  on  her  fills  the 
closing  paragraphs  of  his  Confessions,  I. 

^  His  most  famous  book,  Confessions,  appeared  in  1782,  after 
his  death. 

3  1766-1817. 

*  1737-1814  ;  author  of  Paul  and  Virginia. 


260  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

onwards  to  the  present  astonishing  convulsionary  '  Lit- 
erature of  Desperation,'  it  is  everywhere  abundant. 
That  same  rosepink  is  not  the  right  hue.  Look  at  a 
Shakspeare,  at  a  Goethe,  even  at  a  Walter  Scott !  He 
who  has  once  seen  into  this,  has  seen  the  difference  of 
the  True  from  the  Sham-True,  and  will  discriminate 
them  ever  afterwards. 

We  had  to  observe  in  Johnson  how  much  good  a 
Prophet,  under  all  disadvantages  and  disorganisations, 
can  accomplish  for  the  world.  Li  Rousseau  we  are 
called  to  look  rather  at  the  fearful  amount  of  evil 
which,  under  such  disorganisation,  may  accompany  the 
good.  Historically  it  is  a  most  pregnant  spectacle, 
that  of  Rousseau.  Banished  into  Paris  garrets,  in  the 
gloomy  company  of  his  own  Thoughts  and  Necessities 
there  ;  driven  from  post  to  pillar  ;  ^  fretted,  exasj)er- 
ated  till  the  heart  of  him  went  mad,  he  had  grown  to 
feel  deeply  that  the  world  was  not  his  friend  nor  the 
world's  law.  2  It  was  expedient,  if  anyway  possible, 
that  such  a  man  should  not  have  been  set  in  flat  hos- 
tility with  the  world.  He  could  be  cooped  into  garrets, 
laughed  at  as  a  maniac,  left  to  starve,  like  a  wild-beast 

^  The  storm  of  protest  provoked  by  Emile  (1762)  caused  him 
to  leave  Paris.    He  was  driven  in  turn  from  various  towns    in 
Switzerland  and  France.    For  a  while  he  was  living  in  England, 
then  wandering  about  France,  and  finally  back  to  Paris  again. 
2  Famine  is  in  thy  cheeks, 
Need  and  oppression  starveth  in  thine  eyes, 
Contempt  and  beggary  bangs  upon  thy  back  ; 
The  world  is  not  thy  friend  nor  the  world's  law. 

Romeo  and  Juliet,  V,  i,  69-72. 
It  was  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  get  justice  against  an  influen- 
tial aristocrat  that  first  stirred  Rousseau  against  the  order  of 
tliiusrs  in  France. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         261 

in  his  cage  ;  —  but  he  could  not  be  hindered  from  set- 
ting the  world  on  fire.  The  French  Revolution  found 
its  Evangelist  in  Rousseau.  His  semi-delirious^  specu- 
lations on  the  misei"ies  of  civilised  life,  the  prefer- 
ability  of  the  savage  to  the  civilised,  and  suchlike, 
helped  well  to  produce  a  whole  delirium  in  France 
generally.  True,  you  may  well  ask.  What  could  the 
world,  the  governors  of  the  world  do  with  such  a 
man  ?  Difficult  to  say  what  the  governors  of  the  world 
could  do  with  him !  What  he  could  do  with  them  is 
unhappily  clear  enough,  —  guillotine  a  great  many 
of  them !    Enough  now  of  Rousseau. 

It  was  a  curious  phenomenon,  in  the  withered,  un- 
believing, secondhand  Eighteenth  Century,  that  of  a 
Hero  starting  up,  among  the  artificial  pasteboard  fig- 
ures and  productions,  in  the  guise  of  a  Robert  Burns. 
Like  a  little  well  in  the  rocky  desert  places,  —  like  a 
sudden  splendour  of  Heaven  in  the  artificial  Vauxhall ! 
People  knew  not  what  to  make  of  it.  They  took  it 
for  a  piece  of  the  Vauxhall  fire-work  ;  alas,  it  let 
itself  be  so  taken,  though  struggling  half -blindly,  as 
in  bitterness  of  death,  against  that !  Perhaps  no  man 
had  such  a  false  reception  from  his  fellow-men.  Once 
more  a  very  wasteful  life-drama  was  enacted  under 
the  sun. 

The  tragedy  of  Burns's  life  is  known  to  all  of  you. 
Surely  we  may  say,  if  discrepancy  between  place  held 
and  place  merited  constitute  perverseness  of  lot  for 
a  man,  no  lot  could  be  more  perverse  than  Burns's. 
Among  those  secondhand  acting-figures,  mimes  for 
^  Literally  so. 


262  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

most  part,  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  once  more  a 
giant  Original  Man  ;  one  of  those  men  who  reach  down 
to  the  perennial  Deeps,  who  take  rank  with  the  Heroic 
among  men :  and  he  was  born  ^  in  a  poor  Ayrshire 
hut.  The  largest  soul  of  all  tlie  British  lands  came 
among  us  in  the  shape  of  a  hard-handed  Scottish 
Peasant. 

His  Father,  a  poor  toiling  man,  tried  various  things ; 
did  not  succeed  in  any ;  was  involved  in  continual 
difficulties.  The  Steward,  Factor  as  the  Scotch  call 
him,  used  to  send  letters  and  threaten ings.  Burns  says, 
'  which  tlu-ew  us  all  into  tears.'  The  brave,  hard- 
toiling,  hard-suffering  Father,  his  brave  heroine  of  a 
wife ;  and  those  children,  of  whom  Robert  was  one ! 
In  this  Earth,  so  ^vide  otherwise,  no  shelter  for  them. 
The  letters  '  threw  us  aU  into  tears : '  figure  it.  The 
brave  Father,  I  say  always  ;  —  a  silent  Hero  and  Poet; 
without  whom  the  son  had  never  been  a  speaking  one  ! 
Burns's  Schoolmaster  came  afterwards  to  London, 
learnt  what  good  society  was ;  but  declares  that  in  no 
meeting  of  men  did  he  ever  enjoy  better  discourse  than 
at  the  hearth  of  this  peasant.  And  his  poor  '  seven 
acres  of  nursery-ground,'  —  not  that,  nor  the  miserable 
patch  of  clay-farm,  nor  anything  he  tried  to  get  a 
living  by,  would  prosper  with  him  ;  he  had  a  sore  un- 
equal battle  all  his  days.  But  he  stood  to  it  valiantly  ; 
a  wise,  faithful,  unconquerable  man  ;  —  swalloAving 
down  how  many  sore  sufferings  daily  into  silence ; 
fighting  like  an  unseen  Hero,  —  nobody  publishing 
newspaper  paragraphs  about  his  nobleness ;  voting 
pieces  of  plate  to  him !  However,  he  was  not  lost : 
1  1759. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         263 

nothing  is  lost.  Robert  is  there ;  the  outcome  of  him, 
—  and  indeed  of  many  generations  of  such  as  him. 

This  Burns  appeared  under  every  disadvantage  : 
uninstructed,  poor,  born  only  to  hard  manual  toil ;  and 
writing,  when  it  came  to  that,  in  a  rustic  special  dia- 
lect, known  only  to  a  smay  province  of  the  country  he 
lived  in.  Had  he  written,  even  what  he  did  Avrite,  in 
the  general  language  of  England,  I  doubt  not  he  had 
already  become  universally  recognised  as  being,  or 
capable  to  be,  one  of  our  greatest  men.  That  he  should 
have  tempted  so  many  to  penetrate  through  the 
rough  husk  of  that  dialect  of  his,  is  proof  that  there 
lay  something  far  from  common  within  it.  He  has 
gained  a  certain  recognition,  and  is  continuing  to  do 
so  over  all  quarters  of  our  wade  Saxon  world  :  where- 
soever a  Saxon  dialect  is  spoken,  it  begins  to  be 
understood,  by  personal  inspection  of  this  and  the 
other,  that  one  of  the  most  considerable  Saxon  men 
of  the  Eighteenth  century  was  an  Ayrshire  Peasant 
named  Robert  Burns.  Yes,  I  will  say,  here  too  was 
a  piece  of  the  right  Saxon  stuff :  strong  as  the  Harz- 
rock,  rooted  in  the  depths  of  the  world ;  —  rock,  yet 
with  weUs  of  living  softness  in  it !  A  wild  impetuous 
whirlwind  of  passion  and  faculty  slumbered  quiet 
there ;  such  heavenly  melody  dwelling  in  the  heart  of 
it.  A  noble  rough  genuineness ;  homely,  rustic,  honest  ; 
true  simplicity  of  strength;  with  its  lightning-fire, 
with  its  soft  dewy  pity  ;  —  like  the  old  Norse  Thor, 
the  Peasant-god !  — 

Burns's  Brother  Gilbert,  a  man  of  much  sense  and 
worth,  has  told  me  that  Robert,  in  his  young  days,  in 
spite  of    their    hardship,  was    usually    the  gayest   of 


264  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

speech  ;  a  fellow  of  infinite  frolic,  laughter,  sense  and 
heart ;  far  pleasanter  to  hear  there,  stript  cutting 
peats  in  the  bog,  or  suchlike,  than  he  ever  afterwards 
knew  him.  I  can  well  believe  it.  This  basis  of  mirth 
Qfond  (jaillard^  as  old  Marquis  Mirabeau  calls  it), 
a  primal-element  of  sunshine  and  joyfuluess,  coupled 
with  his  other  deep  and  earnest  quahties,  is  one  of 
the  most  attractive  chai-acteristics  of  Burns.  A  large 
fund  of  Hope  dwells  in  him  ;  spite  of  his  tragical  his- 
tory, he  is  not  a  mourning  man.  He  shakes  his  sorrows 
gallantly  aside ;  bounds  forth  victorious  over  them.  It 
is  as  the  lion  shaking  '  dew-drops  from  his  mane  ; '  ^  as 
the  swift-bounding  horse,  that  laughs  at  the  shaking 
of  the  spear,  —  But  indeed,  Hope,  Mirth,  of  the  sort 
like  Burns's,  are  they  not  the  outcome  properly  of 
warm  generous  affection, — such  as  is  the  beginning  of 
all  to  every  man  ? 

You  would  think  it  strange  if  I  called  Burns  the 
most  gifted  British  soul  we  had  in  all  that  century  of 
his  :  and  yet  I  believe  the  day  is  coming  when  there 
will  be  little  danger  in  saying  so.  His  writings,  all 
that  he  did  under  such  obstructions,' are  only  a  poor 
fragment  of  him.  Professor  Stewart  ^  remarked  very 
justly,  what  indeed  is  true  of  all  Poets  good  for  much, 
that  his  poetry  was  not  any  partictdar  faculty ;  but 
the  general  result  of  a  naturally  vigorous  original  mind 
expressing  itself  in  that  way.    Burns's  gifts,  expressed 

1  Cupid 
Shall  from  your  neck  unloose  his  amorous  fold, 
And,  like  a  dew-drop  from  the  lion's  mane, 
Be  shook  to  air.  Troilus  and  Cressida,  III,  iii,  222-225. 

^  Of  Edinburgh  University.     He  entertained  the  poet  in  his 
house,  and  is  speaking  here  from  personal  acquaintance. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         265 

in  conversation,  are  the  theme  of  all  that  ever  heard 
him.  All  kinds  of  gifts :  from  the  gracef iilest  utter- 
ances of  courtesy,  to  the  highest  fire  of  passionate 
speech  ;  loud  floods  of  mirth,  soft  wailings  of  affection, 
laconic  emphasis,  clear  piercing  insight ;  all  was  m 
him.  Witty  duchesses  celebrate  him  as  a  man  whose 
speech  '  led  them  off  their  feet.'  This  is  beautiful : 
but  still  more  beautiful  that  which  Mr.  Lockhart  ^  has 
recorded,  which  I  have  more  than  once  alluded  to, 
How  the  waiters  and  ostlers  at  inns  would  get  out  of 
bed,  and  come  crowding  to  hear  this  man  speak ! 
Waiters  and  ostlers  :  —  they  too  were  men,  and  here 
was  a  man !  I  have  heard  much  about  his  speech ; 
but  one  of  the  best  things  I  ever  heard  of  it  was,  last 
year,  from  a  venerable  gentleman  long  familiar  with 
him.  That  it  was  speech  distinguished  by  always 
having  something  in  it.  "  He  spoke  rather  little  than 
much,"  this  old  man  told  me ;  "  sat  rather  silent  in 
those  early  days,  as  in  the  company  of  persons  above 
him ;  and  always  when  he  did  speak,  it  was  to  throw 
new  light  on  the  matter."  I  know  not  why  any  one 
should  ever  speak  otherwise !  —  But  if  we  look  at  his 
general  force  of  soul,  his  healthy  robustness  everyway, 
the  rugged  downrightness,  jsenetration,  generous  val- 
our and  manf ulness  that  was  in  him,  —  where  shall 
we  readily  find  a  better-gifted  man  ? 

Among  the  great  men  of  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
I  sometimes  feel  as  if  Burns  might  be  found  to  resem- 
ble Mirabeau  more  than  any  other.  They  differ  widely 
in  vesture ;  yet  look  at  them  intrinsically.    There  is 

^  Son-in-law  of  Scott,  biographer  of  Scott  and  Burns  (1794- 
1854). 


2G6  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

the  same  burly  thick-necked  strength  of  body  as  of 
soul ;  —  built,  in  both  cases,  on  what  the  old  Marquis 
calls  ?ifond  f/alllard.  By  nature,  by  course  of  breed- 
ing, indeed  by  nation,  Mirabeau  has  much  more  of 
bluster  ;  a  noisy,  forward,  unresting  man.  But  the 
characteristic  of  Mirabeau  too  is  veracity  and  sense, 
power  of  true  insight,  superiority  of  vision.  The  thing 
that  he  says  is  worth  remembering.  It  is  a  flash  of 
insight  into  some  object  or  other  :  so  do  both  these 
men  speak.  The  same  raging  passions ;  capable  too  in 
both  of  manifesting  themselves  as  the  tenderest  noble 
affections.  Wit,  wild  laughter,  energy,  directness,  sin- 
cerity :  these  were  in  both.  The  types  of  the  two  men 
are  not  dissimilar.  Burns  too  could  have  governed, 
debated  in  National  Assemblies ;  politicised,  as  few 
could.  Alas,  the  courage  which  had  to  exhibit  itself  in 
capture  of  smuggling  schooners  in  the  Solway  Frith  ; 
in  keeping  silence  over  so  much,  where  no  good  speech, 
but  only  inarticulate  rage  was  possible  :  this  might 
have  bellowed  forth  Ushers  de  Breze  ^  and  the  like  ; 
and  made  itself  visible  to  all  men,  in  managing  of 
kingdoms,  in  ruling  of  great  ever-memorable  epochs ! 
But  they  said  to  him  reprovingly,  his  Official  Superi- 
ors said,  and  wrote :  '  You  are  to  work,  not  think.' 
Of  your  thinking-isLCultj,  the  greatest  in  this  land, 
we  have  no  need ;  you  are  to  gauge  beer  2  there  ;  for 
that  only  are  you  wanted.  Very  notable  ;  —  and  worth 
mentioning,  though  we  know  what  is  to  be  said  and 
answered  !     As  if  Thought,  Power  of  Thinking,  were 

^  See  Carlyle's  French  Revolution,  I,  v,  ii. 
2  Beginning  1788,  at  a  salary  of  £70.  Au  incautious  expression 
of  his  political  sentiments  almost  cost  him  his  appointment. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         267 

not,  at  all  times,  in  all  places  and  situations  of  the 
world,  precisely  the  thing-  that  was  wanted.  The  fatal 
man,  is  he  not  always  the  Mwthiuking  man,  the  man 
who  cannot  think  and  see ;  but  only  grope,  and  hal- 
lucinate, and  missee  the  nature  of  the  thing  he  works 
with  ?  He  missees  it,  mistakes  it  as  we  say ;  takes  it 
for  one  thing,  and  it  is  another  thing,  —  and  leaves 
him  standing  like  a  Futility  there !  He  is  the  fatal 
man  ;  unutterably  fatal,  put  in  the  high  places  of  men. 

—  "  Why  complain  of  this  ?  "  say  some :  "  Strength 
is  mournfully  denied  its  arena ;  that  w^as  true  from  of 
old."  Doubtless  ;  and  the  worse  for  the  arena,  answer 
I !  Complaining  profits  little  ;  stating  of  the  truth 
may  profit.  That  a  Europe,  with  its  French  Revolu- 
tion just  breaking  out,  finds  no  need  of  a  Burns  ex- 
cept for  gauging  beer,  —  is  a  thing  I,  for  one,  cannot 
rejoice  at !  — 

Once  more  we  have  to  say  here,  that  the  cliief 
quality  of  Burns  is  the  sincerity  of  him.  So  in  his 
Poetry,  so  in  his  Life.  The  Song  he  sings  is  not  of 
fantasticalities  ;  it  is  of  a  thing  felt,  really  there  ;  t]ie 
prime  merit  of  this,  as  of  aU  in  him,  and  of  his  Life 
generally,  is  truth.  The  Life  of  Burns  is  what  we  may 
call  a  great  tragic  sincerity.  A  sort  of  savage  sincerity, 

—  not  cruel,  far  from  that :  but  wild,  wrestling  naked 
with  the  truth  of  things.  In  that  sense,  there  is  some- 
thing of  the  savage  in  all  great  men. 

Hero-worship,  —  Odin,  Burns  ?  Well ;  these  Men  of 
Letters  too  were  not  without  a  kind  of  Hero-worship : 
but  what  a  strange  condition  has  that  got  into  now ! 
The  waiters  and  ostlers  of  Scotch  inns,  prying  about 
the  door,  eager  to  catch  any  word  that  fell  from  Burns, 


268  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

were  doing  unconscious  reverence  to  the  Heroic. 
Johnson  had  his  Boswell  for  worshipper.  Rousseau 
had  worshippers  enough  ;  princes  calling  on  him  in 
his  mean  garret ;  the  great,  the  beautiful  doing  rever- 
ence to  the  poor  moonstruck  man.  For  himself  a  most 
portentous  contradiction  ;  the  two  ends  of  his  life  not 
to  be  brought  into  harmony.  He  sits  at  the  tables  of 
grandees ;  and  has  to  copy  music  for  his  o^^^l  living. 
He  cannot  even  get  his  music  copied:  "By  dint  of 
dining  out,"  says  he,  "  I  run  the  risk  of  dying  by 
starvation  at  home."  For  his  worshippers  too  a  most 
questionable  thing  !  If  doing  Hero-worship  well  or 
badly  be  the  test  of  vital  wellbeing  or  illbeing  to  a 
generation,  can  we  say  that  these  generations  are  very 
first-rate  ?  —  And  yet  our  heroic  Men  of  Letters  do 
teach,  govern,  are  kings,  priests,  or  what  you  like  to 
call  them ;  intrinsically  there  is  no  preventing  it  by 
any  means  whatever.  The  world  has  to  obey  him  who 
thinks  and  sees  in  the  world.  The  world  can  alter  the 
manner  of  that ;  can  either  have  it  as  blessed  continu- 
ous summer  sunshine,  or  as  unblessed  black  thunder 
and  tornado,  —  with  unspeakable  difference  of  profit 
for  the  world !  The  manner  of  it  is  very  alterable  ;  the 
matter  and  fact  of  it  is"  not  alterable  by  any  power 
under  the  sky.  Light ;  or,  failing  that,  lightning  :  the 
world  can  take  its  choice.  Not  whether  we  call  an 
Odin  god,  prophet,  priest,  or  what  we  call  him  ;  but 
whether  we  believe  the  word  he  tells  us :  there  it  all 
lies.  If  it  be  a  true  word,  we  shall  have  to  believe  it ; 
believing  it,  we  shall  have  to  do  it.  What  name  or 
welcome  we  give  him  or  it,  is  a  point  that  concerns 
ourselves   mainly.     It,  the    new  Truth,   new   deeper 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         269 

revealing  of  the  Secret  of  this  Universe,  is  verily  of 
the  nature  of  a  message  from  on  high ;  and  must  and 
will  have  itseK  obeyed.  — 

My  last  remark  is  on  that  notablest  phasis  of  Burns's 
history,  —  his  visit  to  Edinburgh.  Often  it  seems  to 
me  as  if  his  demeanour  there  were  the  highest  proof 
he  gave  of  what  a  fund  of  worth  and  genuine  manhood 
was  in  him.  If  we  think  of  it,  few  heavier  burdens 
could  be  laid  on  the  strength  of  a  man.  So  sudden  ;  all 
common  Lionism,  which  ruins  innmnerable  men,  was 
as  nothing  to  this.  It  is  as  if  Napoleon  had  been  made 
a  King  of,  not  gradually,  but  at  once  from  the  Artil- 
lery Lieutenancy  in  the  Regiment  La  Fere.^  Burns, 
still  only  in  his  twenty-seventh  year,  is  no  longer  even 
a  ploughman ;  he  is  flying  to  the  West  Indies  to  es- 
cape disgrace  and  a  jail.  This  month  he  is  a  ruined 
peasant,  his  wages  seven  pounds  a  yeai*,  and  these  gone 
from  him :  next  month  he  is  in  the  blaze  of  rank  and 
beauty,  handing  down  jewelled  Duchesses  to  dinner  ;2 
the  cynosure  ^  of  aU  eyes  !  Adversity  is  sometimes  hard 
upon  a  man  ;  but  for  one  man  who  can  stand  pros- 

1  See  p.  334,  n.  1. 

2  In  July,  1786,  he  published  a  volume  of  poems  to  raise  money 
for  his  passage  to  Jamaica,  where  he  intended  to  turn  slave-driver. 
The  volume  won  him  the  instant  and  enthusiastic  recognition  of 
tlie  intellectual  and  social  aristocracy  of  Edinburgh,  whither  he 
went  in  November.  A  new  edition  of  his  poems  brought  him 
about  £500. 

^  "  Dog's  Tail,"  the  name  of  the  constellation  containing  the 
polar  star  ;  hence  any  object  of  conspicuous  attention. 

Where  perhaps  some  Beauty  lies, 
The  Cynosure  of  neighbouring  eyes. 

U Allegro,  79,  80. 


270  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

perity,  there  are  a  hundred  that  will  stand  adversity. 
I  admire  much  the  way  in  which  Burns  met  all  this. 
Perhaps  no  man  one  could  point  out,  was  ever  so  sorely 
tried,  and  so  little  forgot  himself.  Tranquil,  unaston- 
ished  ;  not  abashed,  not  inflated,  neither  awkwardness 
nor  affectation :  he  feels  that  he  there  is  the  man  Rob- 
ert Burns  ;  that  the  '  rank  is  but  the  guinea-stamp  ; '  ^ 
that  the  celebrity  is  but  the  candle-light,  which  will 
show  what  man,  not  in  the  least  make  him  a  better 
or  other  man  !  Alas,  it  may  readily,  unless  he  look  to 
it,  make  him  a  loorse  man ;  a  wretched  inflated  wind- 
bag, —  inflated  till  he  hurst^  and  become  a  dead  lion  ; 
for  whom,  as  some  one  has  said,  '  there  is  no  resur- 
rection of  the  body;'  worse  than  a  living  dog!  — 
Burns  is  admirable  here. 

And  yet,  alas,  as  I  have  observed  elsewhere,  these 
Lion-hunters  were  the  ruin  and  death  of  Burns.  It 
was  they  that  i*endered  it  impossible  for  him  to  live ! 
They  gathered  round  him  in  his  Farm  ;  hindered  his 
industry ;  no  place  was  remote  enough  from  them.  He 
could  not  get  his  Lionism  forgotten,  honestly  as  he  was 
disposed  to  do  so.  He  falls  into  discontents,  into  mis- 
eries, faults ;  the  world  getting  ever  more  desolate  for 
him  ;  health,  character,  peace  of  mind,  all  gone  ;  —  sol- 
itary enough  now.  It  is  tragical  to  think  of  !  These 
men  came  but  to  see  him  ;  it  was  out  of  no  sympathy 
with  him,  nor  no  hatred  to  him.  They  came  to  get  a 
little  amusement :  they  got  their  amusement ;  —  and 
the  Hero's  life  went  for  it ! 

^  The  rank  is  but  the  guinea's  stamp, 
The  man  's  the  gowd  for  a'  that. 

Burus's  For  a'  That  and  a'  That. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS         271 

Eichter  says,  in  the  Island  of  Sumatra  there  is  a 
kind  o£  '  Light-chafers,'  large  Fire-flies,  which  people 
stick  uj)on  spits,  and  illuminate  the  ways  with  at  night. 
Persons  of  condition  can  thus  travel  with  a  pleasant 
radiance,  which  they  much  admire.  Great  honour  to 
the  Fire-flies !    But  — !  — 


LECTURE   VI 

THE  HERO  AS  KING.     CROMWELL,  NAPOLEON  : 
MODERN  REVOLUTIONISM 

[Friday,  22d  May  1840.] 

We  come  now  to  the  last  form  of  Heroism ;  that  which 
we  call  Kingship.  The  Commander  over  Men  ;  he  to 
whose  will  our  wiUs  are  to  be  subordinated,  and  I03  ally 
surrender  themselves,  and  find  their  welfare  iu  doing 
so,  may  be  reckoned  the  most  important  of  Great  Mefn. 
He  is  practically  the  summary  for  us  of  all  the  various 
figures  of  Heroism ;  Priest,  Teacher,  whatsoever  of 
eartlily  or  of  spiritual  dignity  we  can  fancy  to  reside 
in  a  man,  embodies  itself  here,  to  command  over  us, 
to  furnish  us  with  constant  practical  teaching,  to  tell 
us  for  the  day  and  hour  what  we  are  to  do.  He  is 
called  Rex.,  Regulator,  Roi :  our  own  name  is  still 
better  ;  King,  Koiniing.,  which  means  Canning,  Able- 
man. 

Numerous  considerations,  pointing  towards  deep, 
questionable,  and  indeed  unfathomable  regions,  pre- 
sent themselves  here :  on  the  most  of  which  we  must 
resolutely  for  the  present  forbear  to  speak  at  all.  As 
Burke  said  that  perhaps  fair  Trial  hy  J\iry  was  the 
soul  of  Government,  and  that  all  legislation,  adminis- 
tration, parliamentary  debating,  and  the  rest  of  it, 
went  on,  in  '  order  to  bring  twelve  impartial  men  into 
a  jury-box ; '  —  so,  by  much  stronger  reason,  may  I  say 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  273 

here,  that  the  finding  of  your  Ahleman  and  getting 
him  invested  with  the  symbols  of  ability,  with  dignity, 
worship  (tuo/'^/ioship),  royalty,  kinghood,  or  whatever 
we  call  it,  so  that  he  may  actually  have  room  to  guide 
according  to  his  faculty  of  doing  it,  —  is  the  business, 
well  or  ill  accomplished,  of  all  social  procedure  what- 
soever in  this  world !  Hustings-speeches,^  Parliament- 
ary motions.  Reform  Bills,  ^  French  Revolutions,  all 
mean  at  heart  this ;  or  else  nothing.  Find  in  any 
country  the  Ablest  Man  that  exists  there ;  raise  him 
to  the  supreme  place,  and  loyally  reverence  him :  you 
have  a  perfect  government  for  that  country ;  no  ballot- 
box,  parliamentary  eloquence,  voting,  constitution- 
building,  or  other  machinery  whatsoever  can  improve 
it  a  whit.  It  is  in  the  perfect  state  ;  an  ideal  country. 
The  Ablest  Man  ;  he  means  also  the  truest-hearted, 
justest,  the  Noblest  Man  :  what  he  tells  us  to  do  must 
be  precisely  the  wisest,  fittest,  that  we  could  anywhere 
or  anyhow  learn  ;  —  the  thing  which  it  will  in  all  ways 
behove  us,  with  right  loyal  thanlrfulness,  and  nothing 
doubting,  to  do !  Our  doing  and  life  were  then,  so 
far  as  government  could  regulate  it,  well  regulated  ; 
that  were  the  ideal  of  constitutions. 

Alas,  we  know  very  well  that  Ideals  can  never  be 
completely  embodied  in  practice.  Ideals  must  ever  lie 
a  very  great  way  off ;  and  we  will  right  thankfully 
content  ourselves  with  any  not  intolerable  approxima- 
tion thereto  !    Let  no  man,  as  SchiUer  ^  says,  too  quer- 

1  See  p.  145,  n.  3. 

'^  Most  notably  that  of  1832  for  the  correction  of  abuses  in 
the  parliamentary  system. 

^  1759-1805  ;  German  poet  and  dramatist,  friend  of  Goethe. 


274  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

ulously  '  measure  by  a  scale  of  perfection  the  meagre 
product  of  reality  '  in  this  poor  world  of  ours.  We 
will  esteem  him  no  wise  man ;  we  wtil  esteem  him  a 
sickly,  discontented,  foohsh  man.  And  yet,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  is  never  to  be  forgotten  that  Ideals  do 
exist ;  that  if  they  be  not  approximated  to  at  all,  the 
whole  matter  goes  to  wreck!  Infallibly.  No  brick- 
layer builds  a  wall  perfectly  perpendicular,  matheniat- 
ically  this  is  not  possible ;  a  certain  degree  of  perpen- 
dicularity suffices  him  ;  and  he,  like  a  good  bricklayer, 
who  must  have  done  with  his  job,  leaves  it  so.  And 
yet  if  he  sway  too  much  from  the  perpendicular; 
above  all,  if  he  throw  plummet  and  level  quite  away 
from  him,  and  pile  brick  on  brick  heedless,  just  as  it 
comes  to  hand  —  I  Such  bricklayer,  I  think,  is  in  a 
b,ad  way.  Tie  has  forgotten  himself :  but  the  Law  of 
Gravitation  does  not  forget  to  act  on  him ;  he  and  his 
wall  rush-down  into  confused  welter  of  ruin  !  — 

This  is  the  history  of  all  rebellions,  Fi-ench  Revolu- 
tions, social  explosions  in  ancient  or  modern  times. 
You  have  put  the  too  6^;iable  Man  at  the  head  of  af- 
fairs !  The  too  ignoble,  unvaliant,  fatuous  man.  You 
have  forgotten  that  there  is  any  rule,  or  natural  neces- 
sity whatever,  of  putting  the  Able  Man  there.  Brick 
must  lie  on  brick  as  it  may  and  can.  Unable  Simu- 
lacrum of  Ability,  quack,  in  a  word,  must  adjust  him- 
self with  quack,  in  all  manner  of  administration  of 
human  things;  —  which  accordingly  lie  unadministered, 
fermenting  into  unmeasured  masses  of  failure,  of  in- 
digent misery :  in  the  outward,  and  in  the  inward  or 
spii-itual,  miserable  millions  stretch-out  the  hand  for 
their  due  supply,  and  it  is  not  there.    The  'law  of 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  275 

gravitation  '  acts ;  Nature's  laws  do  none  of  them 
forget  to  act.  The  miserable  millions  burst-forth  into 
Sansculottism/  or  some  other  sprt  of  madness :  bricks 
and  bricklayer  lie  as  a  fatal  chaos !  — 

Much  sorry  stuff,  written  some  hundred  years  ago  or 
more,  about  the  '  Divine  right  of  Kings,'  moulders  un- 
read now  in  the  Public  Libraries  of  this  countiy.  Far 
be  it  from  us  to  disturb  the  calm  process  by  which  it 
is  disappearing  harmlessly  from  the  earth,  in  those  re- 
positories !  At  the  same  time,  not  to  let  the  immense 
rubbish  go  without  leaving  us,  as  it  ought,  some  soul 
of  it  behind  —  I  will  say  that  it  did  mean  something ; 
something  true,  which  it  is  important  for  us  and  all 
men  to  keep  in  mind.  To  assert  that  in  whatever  man 
you  chose  to  lay  hold  of  (by  this  or  the  other  plan  of 
clutching  at  him)  ;  and  clapt  a  round  piece  of  metal 
on  the  head  of,  and  called  King,  — there  straightway 
came  to  reside  a  di\ane  virtue,  so  that  he  became  a 
kind  of  god,  and  a  Divinity  inspired  him  with  faculty 
and  right  to  rule  over  you  to  all  lengths  :  this,  —  what 
can  we  do  with  this  but  leave  it  to  rot  silently  in  the 
Public  Libraries  ?  But  I  will  say  withal,  and  that  is 
what  these  Divine-right  men  meant,  That  in  Kings, 
and  in  all  human  Authorities,  and  relations  that  men 
god-created  can  form  among  each  other,  there  is  verily 

^  The  "ism"  of  those  "without  breeches,"  i.  e.  the  Parisian 
mob  in  the  time  of  the  French  Revobition.  Culottes  were  the 
knee  breeches  of  court  dress.  "  It  is  in  these  places,  in  these 
months,  that  the  epithet  Sansculotte  first  gets  applied  to  indigent 
Patriotism;  .  .  .  Destitute-of-Breeches :  a  mournful  Destitu- 
tion ;  which  however,  if  Twenty  millions  share  it,  may  become 
more  effective  than  most  Possessions  ! "  Carlyle's  French  Rev- 
olution,  II,  III,  iv. 


276  LECTURES   ON  HEROES       ' 

either  a  Divine  Right  or  else  a  Diabolic  Wrong ;  one 
or  the  other  of  these  two !  For  it  is  false  altogether, 
what  the  last  Sceptical  Century  taught  us,  that  this 
world  is  a  steamengine.  There  is  a  God  in  this  world ; 
and  a  God's-sanction,  or  else  the  violation  of  such, 
does  look-out  from  all  ruling  and  obedience,  from  aU 
moral  acts  of  men.  There  is  no  act  more  moral  be- 
tween men  than  that  of  rule  and  obedience.  Woe  to 
him  that  claims  obedience  when  it  is  not  due;  \yoe  to 
him  that  refuses  it  when  it  is !  God's  law  is  in  that,  I 
say,  however  the  Parchment-laws  may  run  :  there  is  a 
Divine  Right  ^  or  else  a  Diabolic  Wrong  at  the  heart 
of  every  claim  that  one  man  makes  upon  another. 

It  can  do  none  of  us  harm  to  reflect  on  this :  in  all 
the  relations  of  life  it  will  concern  us  ;  in  Loyalty  and 
Royalty,  the  highest  of  these.  I  esteem  the  modern 
error.  That  all  goes-  by  self-interest  and  the  checking 
and  balancing  of  greedy  knaveries,  and  that,  in  short, 
there  is  nothing  divine  whatever  in  the  association  of 
men,  a  still  more  despicable  error,  natural  as  it  is  to  an 
unbelieving  century,  than  that  of  a  '  divine  right '  in 
people  called  Kings.  I  say.  Find  me  the  true  /i7j«- 
ning.  King  or  Able-man,  and  he  has  a  divine  right  over 
me.  That  we  knew  in  some  tolerable  measure  how  to 
fmd  him,  and  that  all  men  were  ready  to  acknowledge 
his  divine  right  when  found :  this  is  precisely  the  heal- 
ing which  a  sick  world  is  everywhere,  in  these  ages, 
seeking  after  I  The  true  King,  as  guide  of  the  practi- 
cal, has  ever  something  of  the  Pontiff  in  him,  —  guide 
of  the  spiritual,  from  which  all  practice  has  its  rise. 
This  too  is  a  true  saying,  That  the  J\lng  is  head  of  the 
^  Compare  p.  2  :  "the  divine  relation,"  etc. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  277 

Church.  —  But  we  will  leave  the  Polemic  stuff  of  a 
dead  century  to  lie  quiet  on  its  bookshelves. 

Certainly  it  is  a  fearful  business,  that  of  having  your 
Able-man  to  seeh^  and  not  knowing  in  what  manner  to 
proceed  about  it !  That  is  the  world's  sad  predicament 
in  these  times  of  ours.  They  are  times  of  revolution, 
and  have  long  been.  The  bricklayer  with  his  bricks, 
no  longer  heedful  of  plummet  or  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion, have  toppled,  tumbled,  and  it  all  welters  as  we 
see!  But  the  beo-innino-  of  it  was  not  the  French 
Kevolution ;  that  is  rather  the  end,  we  can  hope.  It 
were  truer  to  say,  the  begiiining  was  three  centuries 
further  back:  in  the  Reformation  of  Luther.^  That 
the  thing  which  still  called  itself  Christian  Church  had 
become  a  Falsehood,  and  brazenly  went  about  pretend- 
ing to  pardon  men's  sins  for  metallic  coined  money, 
and  to  do  much  else  which  in  the  everlasting  truth  of 
Nature  it  did  not  now  do :  here  lay  the  vital  malady. 
The  inward  being  wrong,  all  outward  went  ever  more 
and  more  wrong.  Belief  died  away;  all  was  Doubt, 
Disbelief.  The  builder  cast  aioay  his  plummet ;  said 
to  himself,  "  What  is  gravitation  ?  Brick  lies  on  brick 
there !  "  Alas,  does  it  not  still  sound  strange  to  many 
of  us,  the  assertion  that  there  is  a  God's-truth  in  the 
business  of  god-created  men  ;  that  aU  is  not  a  kind  of 
grimace,  an  '  expediency,'  diplomacy,  one  knows  not 
what  I  — 

From  that  first  necessary  assertion  of  Luther's, 
"  You,  self-styled  Papa^  you  are  no  Father  in  God  at 

^  Compare  p.  173,  end. 

2  The  original  form  and  meaning  of  "  pope." 


278  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

all;  you  are  —  a  Chimera,^  whom  I  know  not  how  to 
name  in  polite  language  I  "  —  from  that  onwards  to  the 
shout  ^  which  rose  round  Camille  Desnioidins  in  the 
Palais-Royal, "  Aux  amies  !  "  when  the  people  had 
burst-up  against  all  manner  of  Chimeras,  —  I  find  a 
natural  historical  sequence.  That  shout  too,  so  fright- 
ful, half-infernal,  was  a  great  matter.  Once  more  the 
voice  of  awakened  nations  ;  —  starting  confusedly,  as 
out  of  nightmare,  as  out  of  death-sleep,  into  some  dim 
feeling  that  Life  was  real ;  that  God's-world  was  not 
an  expediency  and  diplomacy !  Infernal ;  —  yes,  since 
they  would  not  have  it  otherwise.  Infernal,  since  not 
celestial  or  terrestrial !  HoUowness,  insincerity  has  to 
cease  ;  sincerity  of  some  sort  has  to  begin.  Cost  what 
it  may,  reigns  of  terror,  horrors  of  French  Revolu- 
tion or  what  else,  we  have  to  return  to  truth.  Here  is 
a  Truth,  as  I  said :  a  Truth  clad  in  hellfire,  since  they 
would  not  but  have  it  so  !  — 

A  common  theory  among  considerable  parties  of 
men  in  England  and  elsewhere  used  to  be,  that  the 
French  Nation  had,  in  those  days,  as  it  were  gone 
mad ;  that  the  French  Revolution  was  a  general  act 
of  insanity,  a  temporary  conversion  of  France  and 
larsfe  sections  of  the  world  into  a  kind  of  Bedlam.'^ 
The  Event  had  risen  and  raged ;  but  was  a  madness 
and  nonentity,  —  gone  now  happily  into  the  region  of 

1  See  p.  18,  n.  1. 

^  "  To  arms  !  "  from  the  crowd  in  tlie  garden  of  the  Palais 
Royal,  addressed  from  a  caf^  table  by  Desmoulins,  a  journalist, 
July  12,  1789.  The  French  Revolution  began  then  :  the  Bastille 
fell  two  days  later.    (See  French  Revolution,  I,  v,  iv.) 

^  A  corrupted  pronunciation  of  "  Bethlehem,"  —  the  Hospital 
(for  lunatics)  of  St.  Mary  of  Bethlehem,  Loudon,  founded  124G. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  279 

Dreams  and  the  Picturesque !  —  To  such  comfortable 
philosojjhers,  the  Three  Days  of  July  1830  ^  must  have 
been  a  surprising  phenomenon.  Here  is  the  French 
Nation  risen  again,  in  musketry  and  death-struggle, 
out  shooting  and  being  shot,  to  make  that  same  mad 
French  Revolution  good  !  The  sons  and  grandsons  of 
those  men,  it  would  seem,  persist  in  the  enterprise : 
they  do  not  disown  it ;  they  will  have  it  made  good ; 
will  have  themselves  shot,  if  it  be  not  made  good ! 
To  philosophers  who  had  made-up  their  life-system 
on  that  '  madness '  quietus,  no  phenomenon  could  be 
more  alarming.  Poor  Niebuhr,^  they  say,  the  Prussian 
Professor  and  Historian,  fell  broken-hearted  in  conse- 
quence ;  sickened,  if  we  can  believe  it,  and  died  of  the 
Three  Days  !  It  was  surely  not  a  very  heroic  death  ; 
—  little  better  than  Racine's,^  dying  because  Louis 
Fourteenth  looked  sternly  on  him  once.  The  world 
had  stood  some  considerable  shocks,  in  its  time  ;  might 
have  been  expected  to  survive  the  Three  Days  too, 
and  be  found  turning  on  its  axis  after  even  them ! 
The  Three  Days  told  all  mortals  that  the  old  French 
Revolution,  mad  as  it  might  look,  was  not  a  transitory 
ebullition  of  Bedlam,  but  a  genuine  product  of  this 
Earth  where  we  all  live  ;  that  it  was  verily  a  Fact, 
and  that  the  world  in  general  would  do  well  every- 
where to  regard  it  as  such. 

Truly,  without  the  French  Revolution,  one  would 

^  Overthrowing  Charles  X  and  his  arbitrary  and  incapable 
government :  Louis  Philippe  became  "  the  Citizen  King  "  by  the 
will  of  the  people. 

2  1776-1831. 

3  One  of  the  greatest  French  tragic  poets  (1G39-1699);  called 
Louis  XIV's  "  toy." 


280  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

not  know  what  to  make  of  an  age  like  this  at  all.  We 
will  hail  the  French  Kevolution,  as  shipwrecked  mari- 
ners might  the  sternest  rock,  in  a  world  otherwise  all 
of  baseless  sea  and  waves.  A  true  Apocalypse,  though 
a  terrible  one,  to  this  false  withered  artificial  time ; 
testifying  once  more  that  Nature  is  ^^r^^^^rnatural ;  if 
not  divine,  then  diabolic ;  that  Semblance  is  not  Real- 
ity ;  that  it  has  to  become  Reality,  or  the  world  will 
take-fire  under  it,  —  burn  it  into  what  it  is,  namely 
Nothing  !  Plausibility  has  ended ;  empty  Routine  has 
ended;  much  has  ended.  This,  as  with  a  Trmnp  of 
Doom,  has  been  proclaimed  to  all  men.  They  are  the 
wisest  who  will  learn  it  soonest.  Long  confused  gen- 
erations before  it  be  learned  ;  peace  impossible  till  it 
be !  The  earnest  man,  surrounded,  as  ever,  with  a 
world  of  inconsistencies,  can  await  patiently,  patiently 
strive  to  do  his  work,  in  the  midst  of  that.  Sentence 
of  Death  is  written  down  in  Heaven  against  all  that ; 
sentence  of  Death  is  now  proclaimed  on  the  Earth 
against  it :  this  he  with  his  eyes  may  see.  And  surely, 
I  should  say,  considering  the  other  side  of  the  matter, 
what  enormous  difficulties  lie  there,  and  how  fast,  fear- 
fully fast,  in  all  countries,  the  inexorable  demand  for 
solution  of  them  is  pressing  on,  —  he  may  easily  find 
other  work  to  do  than  labouring  in  the  Sansculottic 
province  at  this  time  of  day  ! 

To  me,  in  these  circumstances,  that  of '  Hero-worship ' 
becomes  a  fact  inexpressibly  precious  ;  the  most  sola- 
cing fact  one  sees  in  the  world  at  present.  There  is  an 
everlasting  hope  in  it  for  the  management  of  the  world. 
Had  all  traditions,  arrangements,  creeds,  societies  tliat 
men  ever  instituted,  sunk  away,  this  would  remain. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  281 

The  certainty  of  Heroes  being  sent  ns ;  our  faculty, 
our  necessity,  to  reverence  Heroes  when  sent :  it  shines 
like  a  polestar  through  smoke-clouds,  dust-clouds,  and 
all  manner  of  down-rushing  and  conflagration. 

Hero-worship  would  have  sounded  very  strange  to 
those  workers  and  fighters  in  the  French  Revolution. 
Not  reverence  for  Great  Men;  not  any  hope  or  belief, 
or  even  wish,  that  Great  Men  could  again  appear  in 
the  world  !  Nature,  turned  into  a  '  Machine,'  was  as 
if  effete  now  •  could  not  anj'-  longer  produce  Great 
Men  :  —  I  can  tell  her,  she  may  give-up  the  trade 
altogether,  then  ;  we  cannot  do  without  Great  Men !  — 
But  neither  have  I  any  quarrel  with  that  of  '  Liberty 
and  Equality  ; '  with  the  faith  that,  wise  gTeat  men 
being  impossible,  a  level  immensity  of  foolish  small 
men  would  suffice.  It  was  a  natural  faith  then  and 
there.  "  Liberty  and  Equality ;  no  Authority  needed 
any  longer.  Hero-worship,  reverence  for  siich  Au- 
thorities, has  proved  false,  is  itself  a  falsehood  ;  no 
more  of  it!  We  have  had  such Jbrgeries,  we  will  now 
trust  nothing.  So  many  base  plated  coins  passing  in 
the  market,  the  belief  has  now  become  common  that  no 
gold  any  longer  exists,  —  and  even  that  we  can  do 
very  well  without  gold  !  "  I  find  this,  among  other 
things,  that  universal  cry  of  Liberty  and  Equality; 
and  find  in  it  very  natural,  as  matters  then  stood. 

And  yet  surely  it  is  but  the  transition  from  false 
to  true.  Considered  as  the  whole  truth,  it  is  false  alto- 
gether ;  —  the  product  of  entire  sceptical  blindness,  as 
yet  only  struggling  to  see.  Hero-worship  exists  for- 
ever, and  everywhere :  not  Loyalty  alone  ;  it  extends 
from  divine  adoration  down  to  the  lowest  practical  re- 


282  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

gions  of  life.  '  Bending  before  men,'  if  it  is  not  to  be 
a  mere  empty  grimace,  better  dispensed  with  than 
practised,  is  Hero-worship,  —  a  recognition  that  there 
does  dwell  in  that  presence  of  our  brother  something 
divine;  that  every  created  man,  as  Novalis  said,  is  a 
'  revelation  in  the  Flesh.'  They  were  Poets  too,  that 
devised  all  those  graceful  courtesies  which  make  life 
noble  I  Courtesy  is  not  a  falsehood  or  grimace  ;  it  need 
not  be  such.  And  Loyalty,  religious  Worship  itself, 
are  still  possible  ;  nay  still  inevitable. 

May  we  not  say,  moreover,  while  so  many  of  our 
late  Heroes  have  worked  rather  as  revolutionary  men, 
that  nevertheless  every  Great  Man,  every  genuine  man, 
is  by  the  nature  of  him  a  son  of  Order,  not  of  Disorder? 
It  is  a  tragical  position  for  a  true  man  to  work  in  revo- 
IjLitions.  He  seems  an  anarchist ;  and  indeed  a  pain- 
ful element  of  anarchy  does  encumber  him  at  every 
step,  —  him  to  whose  whole  soul  anarchy  is  hostile, 
hateful.  His  mission  is  Order ;  every  man's  is.  He  is 
here  to  make  what  was  disorderly,  chaotic,  into  a  thing 
ruled,  regular.  He  is  the  missionary  of  Order.  Is  not 
all  work  of  man  in  this  world  a  making  of  Order? 
The  carpenter  fmds  rough  trees ;  shapes  them,  con- 
strains them  into  square  fitness,  into  purpose  and  use. 
AVe  are  all  born  enemies  of  Disorder  :  it  is  tragical 
for  us  all  to  be  concerned  in  image-breaking  and  down- 
pulling;  for  the  Great  Man,  more  a  man  than  we,  it  is 
doubly  tragical. 

Thus  too  all  human  things,  maddest  French  Sans- 
culottisms,  do  and  must  work  towards  Order.  I  say, 
there  is  not  a  man  in  them,  raging  in  the  thickest  of 
the  madness,  but  is  impelled  withal,  at  all  moments, 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  283 

towards  Order.  His  very  life  means  that ;  Disorder  is 
dissolution,  death.  No  chaos  but  it  seeks  a  centre  to 
revolve  round.  While  man  is  man,  some  Cromwell  or 
Napoleon  is  the  necessary  finish  of  a  Sansculottism.  — 
Curious :  in  those  days  when  Hero-worship  was  the 
most  incredible  thing  to  every  one,  how  it  does  come- 
out  nevei-theless,  and  assert  itself  practically,  in  a  way 
which  all  have  to  credit.  Divine  right,  take  it  on  the 
great  scale,  is  found  to  mean  divine  might  withal ! 
While  old  false  Formulas  are  getting  trampled  every- 
where into  destruction,  new  genuine  Substances  unex- 
pectedly unfold  themselves  indestructible.  In  rebel- 
lious ages,  when  Kingship  itself  seems  dead  and 
abolished,  Cromwell,  Napoleon  step-forth  again  as 
Kings.  The  history  of  these  men  is  what  we  have  now 
to  look  at,  as  our  last  phasis  of  Heroism.  The  old 
asres  are  broug'ht  back  to  us ;  the  manner  in  which 
Kings  were  made,  and  Kingship  itself  first  took  rise, 
is  again  exhibited  in  the  history  of  these  Two. 

We  have  had  many  civil-wars  in  England  ;  wars  of 
Red  and  White  Roses,^  w  ars  of  Simon  de  Montfort ;  '^ 
wars  enough,  which  are  not  very  memorable.  But 
that  war  of  the  Puritans  has  a  significance  which 
belongs  to  no  one  of  the  others.  Trusting  to  your  can- 
dour, which  will  suggest  on  the  other  side  what  I  have 
not  room  to  say,  I  will  call  it  a  section  once  more  of 
that  great  universal  war  which  alone  makes-up  the 
true  History  of  the  World,  —  the  war  of  Belief  against 

1  Between  the  houses  of  Lancaster  (red)  and  York  (white), 
1450-1485. 

^  About  1208-1265  ;  leader  of  insurgent  barons  against  Henry 
III. 


284  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

Unbelief!  The  struggle  of  men  intent  on  the  real 
essence  of  things,  against  men  intent  on  the  sem- 
blances and  forms  of  things.  The  Puritans,  to  many, 
seem  mere  savage  Iconoclasts,^  fierce  destroyers  of 
Forms ;  but  it  were  more  just  to  call  them  haters  of 
iintme  Forms.  I  hope  we  know  how  to  respect  Laud  ^ 
and  his  King  as  well  as  them.  Poor  Laud  seems  to  me 
to  have  been  weak  and  ill-starred,  not  dishonest ;  an 
unfortunate  Pedant  rather  than  anything  worse.  His 
'  Dreams '  and  superstitions,  at  which  they  laugh  so, 
have  an  affectionate,  lovable  kind  of  character.  He  is 
like  a  College-Tutor,  whose  whole  world  is  forms.  Col- 
lege-rules ;  whose  notion  is  that  these  are  the  life  and 
safety  of  the  world.  He  is  placed  suddenly,  with  that 
imalterable  lucldess  notion  of  his,  at  the  head  not  of  a 
College  but  of  a  Nation,  to  regulate  the  most  complex 
deep-reaching  interests  of  men.  He  thinks  they  ought 
to  go  by  the  old  decent  regulations ;  nay  that  their  sal- 
vation will  lie  in  extending  and  improving  these.  Like 
a  weak  man,  he  drives  with  spasmodic  vehemence 
towards  his  purpose ;  cramps  laimself  to  it,  heeding  no 
voice  of  prudence,  no  cry  of  pity  :  He  will  have  his 
College-rules  obeyed  by  his  Collegians ;  that  first ;  and 
till  that,  nothing.  He  is  an  ill-starred  Pedant,  as  I 
said.  He  would  have  it  the  world  was  a  College  of 
that  kind,  and  the  world  was  not  that.  Alas,  was  not 
his  doom  stern  enough  ?  Whatever  wrongs  he  did, 
were  they  not  aU  frightfully  avenged  on  him? 

^  Image-breakers. 

2  1573-1645  ;  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, —  a  chief  object  of 
Puritan  hostility.  Laud  and  bis  king  (Charles  I,  1600-1649) 
were  both  beheaded. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  285 

It  is  meritorious  to  insist  on  forms ;  Religion  and 
all  else  natui'ally  clothes  itself  in  forms.  Everywhere 
the  formed  world  is  the  only  habitable  one.  The 
naked  formlessness  of  Puritanism  is  not  the  thing  I 
praise  in  the  Puritans  ;  it  is  the  thing  I  pity,  —  prais- 
ing only  the  spirit  which  had  rendered  that  inevitable ! 
All  substances  clothe  themselves  in  forms :  but  there 
are  suitable  true  forms,  and  then  there  are  untrue 
unsuitable.  As  the  briefest  definition,  one  might  say, 
Forms  which  grow  round  a  substance,  if  we  rightly 
understand  that,  will  correspond  to  the  real  nature 
and  purport  of  it,  will  be  true,  good ;  forms  which 
are  consciously  j)ut  round  a  substance,  bad.  I  invite 
you  to  reflect  on  this.  It  distinguishes  true  from  false 
in  Ceremonial  Form,  earnest  solemnity  from  empty 
pageant,  in  all  human  things. 

There  must  be  a  veracity,  a  natural  spontaneity 
in  forms.  In  the  commonest  meeting  of  men,  a  per- 
son making,  what  we  call,  '  Set  speeches, '  is  not  he 
an  offence?  In  the  mere  drawing-room,  whatsoever 
courtesies  you  see  to  be  grimaces,  jirompted  by  no 
spontaneous  reality  within,  are  a  thing  you  wish  to 
get  away  from.  But  suppose  now  it  were  some  mat- 
ter of  vital  concernment,  some  transcendent  matter 
(as  Divine  Worship  is),  about  which  your  whole  soul, 
struck  dumb  with  its  excess  of  feeling,  knew  not 
how  io  form  itself  into  utterance  at  all,  and  preferred 
formless  silence  to  any  utterance  there  possible,  — 
what  should  we  say  of  a  man  coming  forward  to  re- 
present or  utter  it  for  you  in  the  way  of  upholsterer- 
mummery?  Such  a  man,  —  let  him  depart  swiftly,  if 
he  love  himself !     You  have  lost  your  only  son  ;  are 


286  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

mute,  struck  down,  without  even  tears:  an  importunate 
man  importunately  offers  to  celebrate  Funeral  Games 
for  him  in  the  manner  of  the  Greeks  !  Such  mummery 
is  not  only  not  to  be  accepted,  —  it  is  hateful,  unen- 
durable. It  is  what  the  old  Prophets  called  '  Idolatry,' 
worshipping  of  hollow  shows  ;  what  all  earnest  men  do 
and  will  reject.  We  can  partly  understand  what  those 
poor  Puritans  meant.  Laud  dedicating  that  St.  Cath- 
erine Creed's  Church,^  in  the  manner  we  have  it  de- 
scribed ;  with  his  multiplied  ceremonial  bowings,  gestic- 
idations,  exclamations :  surely  it  is  rather  the  rigorous 
formal  Pedant^  mtent  on  his  '  College-rules,'  than  the 
earnest  Prophet,  intent  on  the  essence  of  the  matter. 

Puritanism  found  siich  forms  insupportable;  tram- 
pled on  such  forms  :  —  we  have  to  excuse  it  for  saying. 
No  form  at  all  rather  than  such  I  It  stood  preaching 
in  its  bare  pulpit,  with  nothing  but  the  Bible  in  its 
hand.  Nay,  a  man  preaching  from  his  earnest  soul 
into  the  earnest  souls  of  men  :  is  not  this  virtually  the 
essence  of  all  Churches  whatsoever?  The  nakedest, 
savagest  reality,  I  say,  is  preferable  to  any  semblance, 
however  dignified.  Besides,  it  will  clothe  itself  with 
due  semblance  by  and  by,  if  it  be  real.  No  fear  of 
that ;  actually  no  fear  at  all.  Given  the  living  man, 
there  will  be  found  clothes  for  him ;  he  will  find  him- 
self clothes.  But  the  suit-of-clothes  pretending  that  it 
is  both  clothes  and  man  — !  —  We  cannot  '  fight 
the  French '  by  three-hundred-thousand  red  uniforms  ; 
there  must  be  men  in  the  inside  of  them  !  Semblance, 
I  assert,  must  actually  not  divorce  itself  fi*om  Reality. 

^  In  London,  January',  1631,  thereby  giving  fresh  offense  to 
the  Puritans. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  287 

If  Semblance  do,  —  why  then  there  must  be  men  found 
to  rebel  against  Semblance,  for  it  has  become  a  lie ! 
These  two  Antagonisms  at  war  here,  in  the  case  of 
.Laud  and  the  Puritans,  are  as  old  nearly  as  the  world. 
They  went  to  fierce  battle  over  England  in  that  age ; 
and  fought-out  their  confused  controversy  to  a  certain 
length,  with  many  results  for  all  of  us. 

In  the  age  which  directly  followed  that  of  the  Puri- 
tans, their  cause  or  themselves  were  little  likely  to 
have  justice  done  them.  Charles  Second  ^  and  his 
Rochesters  were  not  the  kind  of  men  you  would  set  to 
judge  what  the  worth  or  meaning  of  such  men  might 
have  been.  That  there  could  be  any  faith  or  truth  in 
the  life  of  a  man,  was  what  these  poor  Rochesters,  and 
the  age  they  ushered-in,  had  foi'gotten.  Puritanism 
was  hung  on  gibbets,  —  like  the  bones  of  the  leading 
Puritans.  Its  work  nevertheless  went  on  accomplish- 
ing itself.  All  true  work  of  a  man,  hang  the  author 
of  it  on  what  gibbet  you  like,  must  and  will  accom- 
plish itself.  We  have  our  Haheas-Corpus,  our  free 
Representation  of  the  People ;  acknowledgment,  wide 
as  the  world,  that  all  men  are,  or  else  must,  shall,  and 
wiU  become,  what  we  call/Vee  men; — men  with  their 
life  grounded  on  reality  and  justice,  not  on  tradition, 
which  has  become  unjust  and  a  chimera!  This  in  part, 
and  much  besides  this,^  was  the  work  of  the  Puritans. 

^  1G30-1685  ;  "  restored  "  16G0.  Rochester  was  one  of  the 
most  corrupt  favorites  of  his  corrupt  court  ;  also  a  skillful  versi- 
fier. 

^  "  Slowly  hut  steadily  it  introduced  its  own  seriousness  and 
purity  into  English  society,  English  literature,  Englisli  politics. 
The  whole  history  of  English  progress  since  the  Restoration,  on  its 


288  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

And  indeed,  as  these  things  became  gradually  mani- 
fest, the  character  of  the  Puritans  began  to  clear  it- 
self. Their  memories  were,  one  after  another,  taken 
down  from  the  gibbet ;  nay  a  certain  portion  of  them 
are  now,  in  these  days,  as  good  as  canonised.  Eliot,^ 
Hampden,^  Pp^i^  ^^J  Ludlow,^  Plutchinson,^  Vane^ 
himself,  are  admitted  to  be  a  kind  of  Heroes  ;  politi- 
cal Conscript  Fathers,*  to  whom  in  no  small  d«?gree 
we  owe  what  makes  us  a  free  England  :  it  would  not  be 
safe  for  anybody  to  designate  these  men  as  wicked  now. 
Few  Puritans  of  note  but  find  their  apologists  some- 
where, and  have  a  certain  reverence  paid  them  by  ear- 
nest men.  One  Puritan,  I  think,  and  almost  he"  alone, 
our  poor  Cromwell,  seems  to  hang  yet  on  the  gibbet, 
and  find  no  hearty  apologist  anywhere.  Him  neither 
saint  nor  sinner  will  acquit  of  great  wickedness.  A 
man  of  ability,  infinite  talent,  courage,  and  so  forth : 
but  he  betrayed  the  Cause.  Selfish  ambition,  dishon- 
esty, duplicity ;  a  fierce,  coarse,  hypocritical  TarUife. ;  ^ 
turning  all  that  noble  Struggle  for  constitutional 
Liberty  into  a  sorry  farce  played  for  his  own  benefit : 
this  and  worse  is  the  character  they  give  of  Cromwell. 
And  then  there  come  contrasts  with  Washington  and 
others ;  above  all,  with  these  noble  Pyms  and  Hamp- 
dens,  whose  noble  work  he  stole  for  himself,  and 
ruined  into  a  futility  and  deformit3^ 

moral  and  spiritual  sides,  has  been  the  history  of  Puritanism." 
J.  R.  Green,  SJiort  History  of  the  English  People,  III,  1285  (N.  Y. 
1894). 

^  See  later  notes. 

2  One  of  the  Regicides,  1G17C?)-1692  ;  died  in  exile. 

"^  The  Younger,  born  1612,  beheaded  1662. 

^  Title  of  the  Senators  of  ancient  Rome. 

^Hero  of  Molifere's  comedy  of  same  name,  1667. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  289 

This  view  of  Cromwell  seems  to  me  the  not  unnatural 
product  of  a  century  like  the  Eighteenth.  As  we  said 
of  the  Valet,  so  of  the  Sceptic  :  He  does  not  know  a 
Hero  when  he  sees  him!  The  Valet  expected  purple 
mantles,  gilt  sceptres,  bodyguards  and  flourishes  of 
trumpets :  the  Sceptic  of  the  Eighteenth  century  looks 
for  regulated  respectable  Formulas,  'Principles,'  or 
what  else  he  may  call  them ;  a  style  of  speech  and 
conduct  which  has  got  to  seem  '  respectable,'  which  can 
plead  for  itself  in  a  handsome  articulate  manner,  and 
gain  the  suffrages  of  an  enlightened  sceptical  Eight- 
eenth century !  It  is,  at  bottom,  the  same  thing  that 
both  the  Valet  and  he  expect :  the  garnitures  of  some 
acknowledged  royalty,  which  then  they  will  acknow- 
ledge !  The  King  coming  to  them  in  the  rugged  ^ln- 
formulistic  state  shall  be  no  King. 

For  my  own  share,  far  be  it  from  me  to  say  or  in- 
sinuate a  word  of  disparagement  against  such  charac- 
ters as  Hampden,  Eliot,  Pym ;  whom  I  believe  to  have 
been  right  worthy  and  useful  men.  I  have  read  dili- 
gently what  books  and  documents  about  them  I  could 
come  at ;  —  with  the  honestest  wish  to  admire,  to  love 
and  worship  them  like  Heroes  ;  but  I  am  sorry  to  say, 
if  the  real  truth  must  be  told,  with  very  indifferent 
success !  At  bottom,  I  found  that  it  woidd  not  do. 
They  are  very  noble  men,  these  ;  step  along  in  their 
stately  way,  with  their  measured  euphemisms,  philoso- 
phies, parliamentary  eloquences,  Ship-moneys,^   Mon- 

^  An  obsolete  tax  which  Charles  I  sought  to  revive  by  way  of 
raising  money  independently  of  Parliament.  Hampden  (1594- 
1643)  led  the  resistance  against  its  payment  in  1G37,  and  as  a 
result  was  for  a  time  imprisoned. 


290  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

archies  of  Man  ;  ^  a  most  constitutional,  unblamable, 
dignified  set  of  men.  But  the  heart  remains  cold 
before  them ;  the  fancy  alone  endeavours  to  get-up 
some  worship  of  them.  "What  man's  heart  does,  in 
reality,  break-forth  into  any  fire  of  brotherly  love  for 
these  men  ?  They  are  become  dreadfully  dull  men ! 
One  breaks-down  often  enough  in  the  constitutional 
eloquence  of  the  admirable  Pyin,^  with  his  '  seventhly 
and  lastly.'  You  find  that  it  may  be  the  admirablest 
thing  in  the  world,  but  that  it  is  heavy,  —  heavy  as 
lead,  barren  as  brick-clay  ;  that,  in  a  word,  for  you 
there  is  little  or  nothing  now  surviving  there  !  One 
leaves  all  these  Nobilities  standing  in  their  niches  of 
honour:  the  rugged  outcast  Cromwell,  he  is  the  man 
of  them  all  in  whom  one  still  finds  human  stuff.  The 
great  savage  Baresark:  ^  he  could  write  no  euphemistic 
Monarchy  of  Man  ;  did  not  speak,  did  not  work  with 
glib  regularity  ;  had  no  straight  story  to  tell  for  him- 
self anywhere.  But  he  stood  bare,  not  cased  in  euphe- 
mistic coat-of-mail ;  he  grappled  like  a  giant,  face  to 
face,  heart  to  heart,  with  the  naked  truth  of  things  ! 
That,  after  all,  is  the  sort  of  man  for  one.  I  plead 
guilty  to  valuing  such  a  man  beyond  all  other  sorts  of 
men.  Smooth-shaven  Respectabilities  not  a  few  one 
finds,  that  are  not  good  for  much.     Small  thanks  to  a 

^  Eliot,  imprisoned  iu  the  Tower  of  London  on  charge  of  con- 
spiracy against  the  King,  wrote  the  Monarchy  of  Man  (1630).  He 
refused  to  win  his  freedom  by  acknowledging  himself  wrong  in 
his  conduct  towards  the  King,  and  died  in  the  Tower,  1G32. 

2  1584-1643. 

^  "  Bare  shirt  "  {i.  e.  without  armor),  from  the  supposed  (mis- 
taken) etymology  of  "  berserk  "  (a  wild  Norse  warrior)  which 
means  a  shirt  or  coat  of  bear  skin. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  291 

man  for  keeping  his  hands  cl^an,  who  would  not  touch 
the  work  but  with  gloves  on  ! 

Neither,  on  the  whole,  does  this  constitutional  tol- 
erance of  the  Eighteenth  century  for  the  other  happier 
Puritans  seen  to  be  a  very  great  matter.  One  might 
say,  it  is  but  a  piece  of  Formulism  and  Scepticism, 
like  the  rest.  They  tell  us,  It  was  a  sorrowfid  thing 
to  consider  that  the  foundation  of  our  English  Liber- 
ties should  have  been  laid  by  '  Superstition.'  These 
Puritans  came  forward  with  Calvinistic  incredible 
Creeds,  Anti-Laudisms,  Westminster  Confessions; 
demanding,  chiefly  of  all,  that  they  should  have 
liberty  to  worshi]}  in  their  own  way.  Liberty  to  fax 
themselves :  that  was  the  thing  they  should  have 
demanded !  It  was  Superstition,  Fanaticism,  disgrace- 
ful ignorance  of  Constitutional  Philosophy  to  insist 
on  the  other  thing !  —  Liberty  to  tax  oneself  ?  Not  to 
pay-out  money  from  your  pocket  except  on  reason 
shown?  No  century,  I  think,  but  a  rather  barren  one 
would  have  fixed  on  that  as  the  first  right  of  man  ! 
I  should  say,  on  the  contrary,  A  just  man  will  gen- 
erally have  better  cause  than  money  in  what  shape 
soever,  before  deciding  to  revolt  against  his  Govern- 
ment. Ours  is  a  most  confused  world  ;  in  which  a 
good  man  will  be  thankful  to  see  any  kind  of  Govern- 
ment maintain  itself  in  a  not  insupportable  manner: 
and  here  in  England,  to  this  .hour,  if  he  is  not  ready 
to  pay  a  great  many  taxes  which  he  can  see  very  small 
reason  in,  it  will  not  go  well  with  him,  I  think !  He 
must  try  some  other  climate  than  this.  Taxgatherer  ? 
Money  ?  He  will  say :  "  Take  my  money,  since  you 
can,  and  it  is  so  desirable  to  you  ;  take  it,  —  and  take 


292  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

yourself  away  with  it ;  and  leave  me  alone  to  my 
work  here.  /  am  still  here  ;  can  still  work,  after  all 
the  money  you  have  taken  from  me !  "  But  if  they 
come  to  hun,  and  say,  "•  Acknowledge  a  Lie  ;  j^retend 
to  say  you  are  worshipping  God,  when  you  are  not 
doing  it :  believe  not  the  thing  that  yoii  find  true,  but 
the  thing  that  I  find,  or  pretend  to  find  true ! "  He 
will  answer :  "  No  ;  by  God's  help,  no !  You  may 
take  my  purse ;  but  I  cannot  have  my  moral  Self 
annihilated.  The  purse  is  any  Highwayman's  who 
might  meet  me  with  a  loaded  pistol :  but  the  Self  is 
mine  and  God  my  Maker's ;  it  is  not  yours  ;  and  I 
will  resist  you  to  the  death,  and  revolt  against  you, 
and,  on  the  whole,  front  all  manner  of  extremities, 
accusations  and  confusions,  in  defence  of  that !  "  — 

Really,  it  seems  to  me  the  one  reason  which  could 
justify  revolting,  this  of  the  Puritans.  It  has  been  the 
soul  of  all  just  revolts  among  men.  Not  Hunger  alone 
produced  even  the  French  Revolution ;  no,  but  the 
feeling  of  the  insupportable  all-pervading  Falsehood 
which  had  now  embodied  itself  in  Hunger,  in  universal 
material  Scarcity  and  Nonentity,  and  thereby  become 
indisputably  false  in  the  eyes  of  all!  We  will  leave 
the  Eighteenth  century  with  its  '  liberty  to  tax  itself.' 
We  will  not  astonish  ourselves  that  the  meaning  of 
such  men  as  the  Puritans  remained  dim  to  it.  To  men 
who  believe  in  no  reality  at  all,  how  shall  a  real  human 
soul,  the  intensest  of  all  realities,  as  it  were  the  voice 
of  this  world's  Maker  stiU  speaking  to  us,  —  be  intelli- 
gible ?  What  it  cannot  reduce  into  constitutional  doc- 
trines relative  to  '  taxing,'  or  other  the  like  material 
interest,  gross,  palpable  to  the  sense,  such  a  century 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  293 

will  needs  reject  as  an  amorphous  heap  of  rulbbish. 
Hampdens,  Pyms  and  Ship-money  will  be  the  theme 
of  much  constitutional  eloquence,  striving  to  be  fervid; 
—  which  will  glitter,  if  not  as  fire  does,  then  as  ice 
does :  and  the  irreducible  Cromwell  will  remain  a 
chaotic  mass  of  '  madness,'  '  hypocrisy,'  and  much  else. 

From  of  old,  I  will  confess,  this  theory  of  Crom- 
well's falsity  has  been  incredible  to  me.  Nay  I  cannot 
believe  the  like,  of  any  Great  Man  whatever.  _  Multi- 
tudes of  Great  Men  figure  in  History  as  false  selfish 
men ;  but  if  we  will  consider  it,  they  are  but  figures 
for  us,  unintelligible  shadows  ;  we  do  not  see  into  them 
as  men  that  could  have  existed  at  all.  A  supei-ficial 
unbelieving  generation  only,  with  no  eye  but  for  the 
surfaces  and  semblances  of  things,  coidd  form  such  no- 
tions of  Great  Men.  Can  a  great  soul  be  possible  with- 
out a  conscience  in  it,  the  essence  of  all  real  souls, 
great  or  small?  —  No,  we  cannot  figure  Cromwell 
as  a  Falsity  and  Fatuity  ;  the  longer  I  study  him  and 
his  career,  I  believe  this  the  less.  Why  should  we? 
There  is  no  evidence  of  it.  Is  it  not  strange  that, 
after  all  the  mountains  of  calumny  this  man  has  been 
subject  to,  after  being  represented  as  the  very  prince 
of  liars,  who  never,  or  hardly  ever,  spoke  truth,  but 
always  some  cunning  counterfeit  of  truth,  there  should 
not  yet  have  been  one  falsehood  clearly  brought  home 
to  him?  A  prince  of  liars,  and  no  lie  spoken  by  him. 
Not  one  that  I  could  yet  get  sight  of.  It  is  like 
Pococke  asking  Grotius,  Where  is  your  lyroof  of  Ma- 
homet's Pigeon  ?  No  proof !  —  Let  us  leave  all  these 
calumnious   chimeras,  as  chimeras  ought   to  be    left. 


294  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

They  are  not  portraits  of  the  man  ;  they  are  distracted 
phantasms  of  him,  the  joint  product  of  hatred  and 
darkness. 

Looking  at  the  man's  life  with  our  own  eyes,  it  seems 
to  me,  a  very  different  hyjiothesis  suggests  itself.  What 
little  we  know  of  his  earlier  obscure  years,  distorted 
as  it  has  come  down  to  us,  does  it  not  all  betoken  an 
earnest,  affectionate,  sincere  kind  of  man?  His  nervous 
melancholic  temperament  indicates  rather  a  seriousness 
too  deep  for  him.  Of  those  stories  of  '  Spectres  ; '  of 
the  white  Spectre  in  broad  daylight,  predicting  that 
he  should  be  King  of  England,  we  are  not  bound  to 
believe  much  ;  —  probably  no  more  than  of  the  other 
black  Spectre,  or  Devil  in  person,  to  whom  the  Officer 
saio  him  sell  himself  before  Worcester  Fight !  ^  But 
the  mournful,  over-sensitive,  hypochondriac  humour  of 
Oliver,  in  his  young  years,  is  otherwise  indisputably 
known.  The  Huntingdon  ^  Physician  told  Sir  Philip 
Warwick  himself.  He  had  often  been  sent  for  at 
midnight ;  Mr.  Cromwell  was  full  of  hypochondria, 
thought  himself  near  dying,  and  "  had  fancies  about 
the  Towncross."  These  things  are  significant.  Such 
an  excitable  deep-feeling  nature,  in  that  rugged  stub- 
born strength  of  his,  is  not  the  sj^mptom  of  falsehood  ; 
it  is  the  symptom  and  promise  of  quite  other  than 
falsehood ! 

The  young  Oliver  is  sent  to  study  Law ;  falls,  or 
is  said  to  have  fallen,  for  a  little  period,  into  some  of 

^  September  3,  1G51;  Cromwell  defeated  the  Scotch  Royalists 
led  by  Charles  II. 

2  About  forty-four  to  sixty  miles  north  of  LondoJi;  Cromwell 
was  born  there,  April  25, 1599.  St.  Ives  and  Ely,  where  he  lived 
later,  are  not  far  off,  toward  the  east. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  295 

the  dissipations  of  youth ;  but  if  so,  speedily  repents, 
abandons  all  this  :  not  much  above  twenty,  he  is  mar- 
ried, settled  as  an  altogether  grave  and  quiet  man. 
'  He  pays-back  what  money  he  had  won  at  gambling,' 
says  the  story ;  —  he  does  not  think  any  gain  of  that 
kind  could  be  really  his.  It  is  very  interesting,  very 
natural,  this  '  conversion,'  as  they  well  name  it ;  this 
awakening  of  a  great  true  soul  from  the  worldly  slough, 
to  see  into  the  awful  truth  of  things ;  —  to  see  that 
Time  and  its  shows  all  rested  on  Eternity,  and  this 
poor  Earth  of  ours  was  the  threshold  either  of  Heaven 
or  of  Hell !  Oliver's  life  at  St.  Ives  and  Ely,  as  a  sober 
industrious  Farmer,  is  it  not  altogether  as  that  of  a 
true  and  devout  man  ?  He  has  renounced  the  world 
and  its  ways  ;  its  prizes  are  not  the  thing  that  can  en- 
rich him.  He  tills  the  earth  ;  he  reads  his  Bible  ;  daily 
assembles  his  servants  round  him  to  worship  God.  He 
comforts  persecuted  ministers,  is  fond  of  preachers ; 
nay  can  himself  preach,  —  exhorts  his  neighbours  to 
be  wise,  to  redeem  the  time.  In  all  this  what  '  hyjjo- 
crisy,'  'ambition,'  'cant,'  or  other  falsity?  The  man's 
hopes,  I  do  believe,  were  fixed  on  the  other  Higher 
World ;  his  aim  to  get  well  thither,  by  walking  well 
through  his  humble  course  in  this  world.  He  courts 
no  notice  :  what  could  notice  here  do  for  him  ?  '  Ever 
in  his  great  Taskmaster's  eye.'  ^ 

It  is  striking,  too,  how  he  comes-out  once  into  pub- 
lic view ;  he,  since  no  other  is  willing  to  come  :  in 
resistance  to  a  public  grievance.    I  mean,  in  that  mat- 

^  All  is,  if  I  have  grace  to  use  it  so 
As  ever  in  my  great  Task-master's  eye. 
—  Milton's  sonnet,  On  arriving  at  the  age  of  twenty-three. 


296  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

ter  of  the  Bedford  Fens.^  No  one  else  will  go  to  law 
with  Authority  ;  therefore  he  will.  That  matter  once 
settled,  he  returns  back  into  obscurity,  to  his  Bible 
and  his  Plough.  '  Gain  influence '  ?  His  influence  is 
the  most  legitimate  ;  derived  from  personal  knowledge 
of  him,  as  a  just,  religious,  reasonable,  and  determined 
man.  In  this  way  he  has  lived  till  past  forty ;  old  age 
is  now  in  view  of  him,  and  the  earnest  portal  of  Death 
and  Eternity ;  it  was  at  this  point  that  he  suddenly 
became  '  ambitious '  !  I  do  not  interpret  his  Parlia/- 
mentary  mission  in  that  way ! 

His  successes  in  Parliament,  his  successes  through 
the  war,  are  honest  successes  of  a  brave  man ;  who 
has  more  resolution  in  the  heart  of  him,  more  light  in 
the  head  of  him  than  other  men.  His  prayers  to  God ; 
his  spoken  thanks  to  the  God  of  Victory,  who  had 
preserved  him  safe,  and  carried  him  forward  so  far, 
through  the  furious  clash  of  a  world  all  set  in  conflict, 
through  desperate-looking  envelopments  at  Dunbar; 2 
through  the  death-hail  of  so  many  battles ;  mercy 
after  mercy;  to  the  'crowning  mercy '^  of  AVorcester 
Fight :  all  this  is  good  and  genuine  for  a  deep-hearted 
Calvinistic  Cromwell.  Only  to  vain  unbelieving  Cava- 
liers, worshipping  not  God  but  their  own  '  lovelocks,' 
frivolities  and  formalities,  living  quite  apart  from  con- 
templations of  God,  living  without  God  in  the  world, 
need  it  seem  hypocritical. 

Nor   will    liis    participation    in    the    King's    death 

^  The  draining  of  the  Fens  in  1G37. 

2  September  3,  1650;  the  account  of  this  battle  is  one  of  the 
most  striking  passages  in  Carlyle's  Cromivell. 
^  Cromwell's  own  phrase. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  297 

involve  him  in  condemnation  with  us.  It  is  a  stern 
business  killing  of  a  King !  But  if  you  once  go  to  war 
with  him,  it  lies  there  ;  this  and  all  else  lies  there. 
Once  at  war,  you  have  made  wager  of  battle  with 
him  :  it  is  he  to  die,  or  else  you.  Reconciliation  is 
problematic ;  may  be  possible,  or,  far  more  likely,  is 
impossible.  It  is  now  pretty  generally  admitted  that 
the  Parliament,  having  vanquished  Charles  First,  had 
no  way  of  making  any  tenable  arrangement  with  him. 
The  large  Presbyterian  party,  apprehensive  now  of  the 
Independents,  w^ere  most  anxious  to  do  so ;  anxious 
indeed  as  for  their  own  existence ;  but  it  could  not  be. 
The  unhappy  Charles,  in  those  final  Hampton-Court  ^ 
negotiations,  shows  himself  as  a  man  fatally  incapable 
of  being  dealt  with.  A  man  who,  once  for  all,  could 
not  and  would  not  understand : — whose  thought  did 
not  in  any  measure  represent  to  him  the  real  fact  of 
the  matter ;  nay  worse,  whose  word  did  not  at  all 
represent  his  thought.  We  may  say  this  of  him  with- 
out cruelty,  with  deep  pity  rather  :  but  it  is  true  and 
undeniable.  Forsaken  there  of  all  but  the  name  of 
Kingship,  he  still,  finding  himself  treated  with  outward 
respect  as  a  King,  fancied  that  he  might  play-off 
party  against  party,  ^nd  smuggle  himself  into  his  old 
power  by  deceiving  both.  Alas,  they  both  discovered 
that  be  was  deceiving  them.  A  man  whose  word  will 
not  inform  you  at  all  what  he  means  or  will  d«,  is  not 
a  man  you  can  bargain  with.  You  must  get  oiit  of 
that  man's  way,  or  put  him  out  of  yours !  The  Pres- 
byterians, in   their  despair,   were   still  for  believing 

^  A  royal  palace  on  the  Thames,  several  miles  above  London, 
whither  Charles  was  brought  in  1647. 


298  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

Charles,  though  found  false,  unbelievable  again  and 
again.  Not  so  Cromwell :  "  For  all  our  fighting,"  says 
he,  "  we  are  to  have  a  little  bit  of  paper  ?  "    No  !  — 

In  fact,  everywhere  we  have  to  note  the  decisive 
practical  eye  of  this  man  ;  how  he  drives  towards  the 
practical  and  practicable ;  has  a  genuine  insight  into 
what  is  fact.  Such  an  intellect,  I  maintain,  does  not 
belong  to  a  false  man  :  the  false  man  sees  false  shows, 
plausibilities,  expediencies :  the  true  man  is  needed  to 
discern  even  practical  truth.  Cromwell's  advice  about 
the  Parliament's  Army,  early  in  the  contest.  How  they 
were  to  dismiss  their  city-tajosters,  flimsy  riotous  per- 
sons, and  choose  substantial  yeomen,  whose  heart  was 
in  the  work,  to  be  soldiers  for  them :  this  is  advice 
by  a  man  who  saw.  Fact  answers,  if  you  see  into 
Fact !  Cromwell's  Ironsides  were  the  embodiment 
of  this  insight  of  his ;  men  fearing  God ;  and  with- 
out any  other  fear.  No  more  conclusively  genuine  set 
of  fighters  ever  trod  the  soil  of  England,  or  of  any 
other  land. 

Neither  will  we  blame  greatly  that  word  of  Crom- 
well's to  them ;  which  was  so  blamed :  "  If  the  King 
should  meet  me  in  battle,  I  would  kill  the  King."  . 
Why  not  ?  These  words  were  spoken  to  men  who  stood 
as  before  a  Higher  than  Kings.  They  had  set  more 
than  their  own  lives  on  the  cast.  The  Parliament  may 
call  it,  in  official  language,  a  fighting  '•for  the  King ; ' 
but  we,  for  our  share,  cannot  understand  that.  To  us 
it  is  no  dilettante  work,  no  sleek  officiality  ;  it  is  sheer 
rough  death  and  earnest.  They  have  brought  it  to  the 
calling-forth  of  War;  horrid  internecine  fight,  man 
grappling  with  man  in  fire-eyed  rage,  —  the  infernal 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  299 

element  in  man  called  forth,  to  try  it  by  that !  Do 
that  therefore  ;  since  that  is  the  thing  to  be  done.  — 
The  successes  of  Cromwell  seem  to  me  a  very  natural 
thing !  Since  he  was  not  shot  in  battle,  they  were  an 
inevitable  thing.  That  such  a  man,  with  the  eye  to 
see,  with  the  heart  to  dare,  shoidd  advance,  from  post 
to  post,  from  victory  to  victory,  till  the  Huntingdon 
Farmer  became,  by  whatever  name  you  might  call 
him,  the  acknowledged  Strongest  Man  in  England, 
virtually  the  King  of  England,  requires  no  magic  to 
explain  it !  — 

Truly  it  is  a  sad  thing  for  a  people,  as  for  a  man, 
to  fall  into  Scepticism,  into  dilettantism,  insincerity ; 
not  to  know  a  Sincerity  when  they  see  it.  For  this 
world,  and  for  all  worlds,  what  curse  is  so  fatal  ?  The 
heart  lying  dead,  the  eye  cannot  see.  What  intellect 
remains  is  merely  the  vulpine  intellect.  That  a  true 
King  be  sent  them  is  of  small  use ;  they  do  not  know 
him  when  sent.  They  say  scornfidly,  Is  tliis  your 
King  ?  The  Hero  wastes  his  heroic  faculty  in  bootless 
contradiction  from  the  unworthy  ;  and  can  accomplish 
little.  For  himself  he  does  accomplish  a  heroic  life, 
which  is  much,  which  is  all ;  but  for  the  world  he 
accomplishes  comparatively  nothing.  The  wild  rude 
Sincerity,  direct  from  Nature,  is  not  glib  in  answering 
from  the  witness-box  :  in  your  small-debt  pie-ponKler^ 
court,  he  is  scouted  as  a  counterfeit.  The  vulpine 
intellect  '  detects  '  him.    For  being  a  man  worth  any 

^  From  Ft.  pied  (foot)  and  poudre  (dust),  "  diisty  foot,"  i.  e., 
peddler.  An  inferior  court  for  the  immediate  trial  of  disputes 
arising  at  fairs  and  other  places  where  peddlers  most  do  congre- 
gate. 


300  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

thousand  men,  the  response  your  Knox,  your  Cromwell 
gets,  is  an  argument  for  two  centuries  whether  he  was 
a  man  at  all.  God's  greatest  gift  to  this  Earth  is  sneer- 
ingly  flung  away.  The  miraculous  talisman  is  a  paltry 
plated  coin,  not  fit  to  pass  in  the  shops  as  a  common 
guinea. 

Lamentable  this !  I  say,  this  must  be  remedied.  Till 
this  be  remedied  in  some  measure,  there  is  nothing 
remedied.  '  Detect  quacks  '  ?  Yes  do,  for  Heaven's 
sake  ;  but  know  withal  the  men  that  are  to  be  trusted  ! 
Till  we  know  that,  what  is  all  our  knowledge ;  how 
shall  we  even  so  much  as  '  detect '  ?  For  the  vulpine 
sharpness,  which  considers  itself  to  be  knowledge, 
and  '  detects  '  in  that  fashion,  is  far  mistaken.  Dupes 
indeed  are  many :  but,  of  all  dupes,  there  is  none  so 
fatally  situated  as  he  who  lives  in  undue  terror  of 
being  duped.  The  world  does  exist ;  the  world  has 
truth  in  it,  or  it  woidd  not  exist !  First  recognise 
what  is  true,  we  shall  then  discern  what  is  false ;  and 
properly  never  till  then. 

'  Know  the  men  that  are  to  be  trusted ; '  alas, 
this  is  yet,  in  these  days,  very  far  from  us.  The  sin- 
cere alone  can  recognise  sincerity.  Not  a  Hero  only 
is  needed,  but  a  world  fit  for  him ;  a  world  not  of 
Valets  ;  —  the  Hero  comes  almost  in  vain  to  it  other- 
wise !  Yes,  it  is  far  from  us  :  but  it  must  come  ;  thank 
God,  it  is  visibly  coming.  Till  it  do  come,  what  have 
we  ?  Ballot-boxes,  suffrages,  French  Revolutions :  —  if 
we  are  as  Valets,  and  do  not  know  the  Hero  when  we 
see  him,  what  good  are  all  tliese  ?  A  heroic  Cromwell 
comes ;  and  for  a  hundred-and-fifty  years  he  cannot 
have  a  vote  from  us.    Why,  the  insincere,  unbelieving 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  301 

world  is  the  natural  jjropertt/  of  the  Quack,  and  of 
the  Father  of  quacks  and  quackeries !  Misery,  confu- 
sion, un veracity  are  alone  possible  there.  By  ballot- 
boxes  we  alter  the  figure  of  our  Quack ;  but  the 
substance  of  him  continues.  The  Valet- World  has  to 
be  governed  by  the  Sham-Hei'o,  by  the  King  merely 
dressed  in  King-gear.  It  is  his  ;  he  is  its !  In  bi'ief, 
one  of  two  things :  We  shall  either  learn  to  know  a 
Hero,  a  true  Governor  and  Captain,  somewhat  better, 
when  we  see  him ;  or  else  go  on  to  be  forever  governed 
by  the  Unheroic ;  —  had  we  ballot-boxes  clattering  at 
every  street-corner,  there  were  no  remedy  in  these. 

Poor  Cromwell,  —  great  Cromwell !  The  inarticu- 
late Prophet ;  Prophet  who  could  not  speak.  Rude, 
confused,  struggling  to  utter  himself,  with  his  savage 
depth,  with  his  wild  sincerity ;  and  he  looked  so 
strange,  among  the  elegant  Euphemism s,^  dainty  little 
Falklands,'-^  didactic  Chillingworths,^  diplomatic  Clar- 
endons !  *  Consider  him.  An  outer  hull  of  chaotic 
confusion,  visions  of  the  Devil,  nervous  dreams,  al- 
most semi-madness  ;  and  yet  such  a  clear  determinate 
man's-energy  working  in  the  heart  of  that.  A  kind  of 
chaotic  man.  The  ray  as  of  pure  starlight  and  fire, 
working  in  such  an  element  of  boundless  hypochon- 
dria, wwformed  black  of  darkness !  And  yet  withal 
this  hypochondria,  what  was  it  but  the  very  greatness 

^  The  avoidance  of  calling  things  by  their  right  names,  for 
the  sake  of  greater  pleasantness  or  delicacy  or  smoothness. 
" Smoothshaven  respectabilities"  of  speech. 

^  Statesman  (c.  1610-1643);  served  in  Koyalist  Army. 

^  Clergyman  (1602-1644);  served  in  Royalist  Army. 

*  Royalist  parliamentarian  (1608-1674) ;  wrote  History  of  the 
Rebellion. 


302  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

of  the  man  ?  The  depth  and  tenderness  of  his  wild 
affections  :  the  quantity  of  sympathy  he  had  with 
things, —  the  quantity  of  insight  he  would  yet  get 
into  the  heart  of  things,  the  mastery  he  would  yet  get 
over  things :  this  was  his  hyijochondria.  The  man's 
misery,  as  man's  misery  always  does,  came  of  his 
greatness.  Samuel  Johnson  too  is  that  kind  of  man. 
Sorrow-stricken,  half -distracted ;  the  wild  element  of 
mournful  hlach  enveloping  him,  —  wide  as  the  world. 
It  is  the  character  of  a  prophetic  man  ;  a  man  with 
his  whole  soul  seeing^  and  struggling  to  see. 

On  this  ground,  too,  I  explain  to  myself  Cromwell's 
reputed  confusion  of  speech.  To  himself  the  internal 
meaning  was  sun-clear ;  but  the  material  with  which 
he  was  to  clothe  it  in  utterance  was  not  thei-e.  He 
had  lived  silent ;  a  great  unnamed  sea  of  Thought 
round  him  all  his  days  ;  and  in  his  way  of  life  little 
call  to  attempt  naming  or  uttering  that.  With  his 
sharp  power  of  vision,  resolute  power  of  action,  1 
doubt  not  he  could  have  learned  to  write  Books  withal, 
and  speak  fluently  enough  ;  —  he  did  harder  things 
than  wi'iting  of  Books.  This  kind  of  man  is  precisely 
he  who  is  fit  for  doing  manfully  all  things  you  will 
set  him  on  doing.  Intellect  is  not  speaking  and  logi- 
cising;  it  is  seeing  and  ascertaining.  Virtue,  Vlr-tus, 
manhood,  herohood,  is  not  fair-spoken  immaculate  reg- 
ularity ;  it  is  first  of  all,  what  the  Germans  well 
name  it,  Tug  end  (^Taicgend,  do7v-mg  or  Dovgh-tiness), 
Courage  and  the  Faculty  to  do.  This  basis  of  the 
matter  Cromwell  had  in  him. 

One  understands  moreover  how,  though  he  could 
not  speak  in  Parliament,  he  might  ^>r(?acA,  rhapsodic 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  303 

preaching ;  above  all,  how  he  might  be  great  in  extem- 
pore prayer.  These  are  the  free  outpouring  utterances 
of  what  is  in  the  heart :  method  is  not  required  in  them ; 
warmth,  depth,  sincerity  are  all  that  is  required.  Crom- 
well's habit  of  prayer  is  a  notable  feature  of  him.  All 
his  great  enterprises  were  commenced  with  prayer.  In 
dark  inextricable-looking  difficulties,  his  Officers  and 
he  used  to  assemble,  and  pray  alternately,  for  hours, 
for  days,  till  some  definite  resolution  rose  among  them, 
some  '  door  of  hope,'  as  they  would  name  it,  disclosed 
itself.  Consider  that.  In  tears,  in  fervent  prayers, 
and  cries  to  the  great  God,  to  have  pity  on  them,  to 
make  His  light  shine  before  them.  They,  armed  Sol- 
diers of  Christ,  as  they  felt  themselves  to  be ;  a  little 
band  of  Christian  Brothers,  who  had  drawn  the  sword 
against  a  great  black  devouring  world  not  Christian, 
but  Mammonish,  Devilish,  —  they  cried  to  God  in 
their  straits,  in  their  extreme  need,  not  to  forsake  the 
Cause  that  was  His.  The  light  which  now  rose  upon 
them,  —  how  coidd  a  human  soul,  by  any  means  at 
all,  get  better  light  ?  Was  not  the  purpose  so  formed 
like  to  be  precisely  the  best,  wisest,  the  one  to  be  fol- 
lowed without  hesitation  any  more  ?  To  them  it  was 
as  the  shining  of  Heaven's  own  Splendour  in  the 
waste-howling  darkness  ;  the  PiUar  of  Fire  by  night, 
that  was  to  guide  them  on  their  desolate  perilous  way. 
Was  it  not  such  ?  Can  a  man's  soul,  to  this  hour,  get 
guidance  by  any  other  method  than  intrinsically  by 
that  same,  —  devout  prostration  of  the  earnest  strug- 
gling soul  before  the  Highest,  the  Giver  of  all  Light ; 
be  such  prayer  a  spoken,  articulate,  or  be  it  a  voice- 
less,  inarticulate    one?     There   is   no   other    method. 


304  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

'  Hypocrisy  '  ?  One  begins  to  be  weary  of  all  tliat. 
They  who  call  it  so,  have  no  right  to  speak  on  such 
matters.  They  never  formed  a  jiurpose,  what  one  can 
call  a  purpose.  They  went  about  balancing  expedi- 
encies, plausibilities  ;  gathering  votes,  advices ;  they 
never  were  alone  with  the  truth  of  a  thing  at  all.  — 
Cromwell's  prayers  were  likely  to  be  '  eloquent,'  and 
much  more  than  that.  His  was  the  heart  of  a  man 
who  could  pray. 

But  indeed  his  actual  Speeches,  I  apprehend,  were 
not  nearly  so  ineloquent,  incondite,  as  they  look.  We 
find  he  was,  what  all  speakers  aim  to  be,  an  impressive 
speaker,  even  in  Parliament ;  one  who,  from  the  first, 
had  weight.  With  that  rude  passionate  voice  of  his, 
he  was  always  understood  to  mean  something,  and 
men  wished  to  know  what.  He  disregarded  eloquence, 
nay  despised  and  disliked  it ;  spoke  always  without 
premeditation  of  the  words  he  was  to  use.  The  Re- 
porters, too,  in  those  days  seem  to  have  been  singu- 
larly candid ;  and  to  have  given  the  Printer  precisely 
what  they  found  on  their  own  note-paper.  And 
withal,  what  a  strange  proof  is  it  of  Cromwell's  being 
the  premeditative  ever-calculating  hypocrite,  acting  a 
play  before  the  world.  That  to  the  last  he  took  no 
more  charge  of  his  Speeches !  How  came  he  not  to 
study  his  words  a  little,  before  flinging  them  out  to 
the  public  ?  If  the  words  were  true  words,  they  could 
be  left  to  shift  for  themselves. 

But  with  regard  to  Cromwell's  '  lying,'  we  will  make 
one  remark.  This,  I  suppose,  or  something  like  this, 
to  have  been  the  nature  of  it.  All  parties  found  them- 
selves deceived  in  him ;  each  party  understood  him  to 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  305 

be  meaning  this,  heard  him  even  say  so,  and  behold 
he  turns-out  to  have  been  meaning  that !  He  was,  cry 
they,  the  chief  of  liars.  But  now,  intrinsically,  is  not 
all  this  the  inevitable  fortune,  not  of  a  false  man  in 
such  times,  but  simply  of  a  superior  man  ?  Such  a 
man  must  have  reticences  in  him.  If  he  walk  wearing 
his  heart  upon  his  sleeve  for  daws  to  peck  at,  his 
journey  will  not  extend  far !  There  is  no  use  for  any 
man's  taking-up  his  abode  in  a  house  built  of  glass. 
A  man  always  is  to  be  himself  the  judge  how  much  of 
his  mind  he  will  show  to  other  men  ;  even  to  those 
he  woidd  have  work  along  with  him.  There  are  im- 
pertinent inquiries  made :  your  rule  is,  to  leave  the 
inquirer  ^minformed  on  that  matter  ;  not,  if  you  can 
help  it,  w^isinformed,  but  precisely  as  dark  as  he  was ! 
This,  could  one  hit  the  right  phrase  of  response,  is 
what  the  wise  and  faithful  man  would  aim  to  answer 
in  such  a  case. 

Cromwell,  no  doubt  of  it,  spoke  often  in  the  dia- 
lect of  small  subaltern  parties ;  uttered  to  them  a 
part  of  his  mind.  Each  little  party  thought  him  all 
its  own.  Hence  their  rage,  one  and  all,  to  find  him 
not  of  their  party,  but  of  his  own  party !  Was  it  his 
blame?  At  all  seasons  of  his  history  he  must  have 
felt,  among  such  people,  how,  if  he  explained  to  them 
the  deeper  insight  he  had,  they  must  either  have  shud- 
dered aghast  at  it,  or  believing  it,  their  own  little 
compact  hypothesis  must  have  gone  wholly  to  wreck. 
They  could  not  have  worked  in  his  province  any 
more ;  nay  perhaps  they  could  not  now  have  worked 
in  their  o^vn  province.  It  is  the  inevitable  position  of 
a  great   man    among    small    men.    Small  men,  most 


306  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

active,  useful,  are  to  be  seen  everywhere,  whose  whole 
activity  depends  on  some  conviction  which  to  you  is 
palpably  a  lunited  one ;  imperfect,  what  we  call  an 
error.  But  would  it  be  a  kindness  always,  is  it  a  duty 
always  or  often,  to  disturb  them  in  that?  Many  a 
man,  doing  loud  work  in  the  world,  stands  only  on 
some  thin  traditionality,  cpnventionality ;  to  him  in- 
dubitable, to  you  incredible  :  break  that  beneath  him, 
he  sinks  to  endless  depths !  "  I  might  have  my  hand 
full  of  truth,"  said  Fontenelle,^  "and  open  only  my 
little  finger." 

And  if  this  be  the  fact  even  in  matters  of  doctrine, 
how  much  more  in  all  departments  of  practice  !  He 
that  cannot  withal  keep  his  mind  to  himself  cannot 
practise  any  considerable  thing  whatever.  And  we  call 
it  '  dissimulation, '  all  this?  What  would  you  think  of 
calling  the  general  of  an  army  a  dissembler  because 
he  did  not  tell  every  corporal  and  private  soldier,  who 
pleased  to  put  the  question,  what  his  thoughts  were 
about  everything  ?  —  Cromwell,  I  should  rather  say, 
managed  all  this  in  a  manner  we  must  admire  for  its 
perfection.  An  endless  vortex  of  such  questioning 
*  corporals  '  rolled  confusedly  round  him  through  his 
whole  course ;  whom  he  did  answer.  It  must  have 
been  as  a  great  true-seeing  man  that  he  managed  this 
too.  Not  one  proved  falsehood,  as  I  said ;  not  one ! 
Of  what  man  that  ever  wound  himself  through  such 
a  coil  of  things  will  you  say  so  much  ?  — 

But  in  fact  there  are  two  errors,  widely  prevalent, 
which  pervert  to  the  very  basis  our  judgments  formed 
^  French  poet  and  prose-writer  (1657-1757). 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  307 

about  such  men  as  Cromwell ;  about  their  '  ambi- 
tion,' '  falsity,'  and  suchlike.  The  first  is  what  I  might 
call  substituting  the  goal  of  their  career  for  the  course 
and  starting-point  of  it.  The  vulgar  Historian  of  a 
Cromwell  fancies  that  he  had  determined  on  being 
Protector  of  England,  at  the  time  when  he  was 
ploughing  the  marsh  lands  of  Cambridgeshire.  His 
career  lay  all  mapped-out :  a  program  of  the  whole 
drama ;  which  he  then  step  by  step  dramatically 
unfolded,  with  all  manner  of  cunning,  deceptive  dra- 
maturgy, .  as  he  went  on,  —  the  hollow,  scheming 
'Yttok/ditt/s,  or  Play-actor,  that  he  was  !  This  is  a  rad- 
ical perversion ;  all  but  universal  in  such  cases.  And 
think  for  an  instant  how  different  the  fact  is  !  How 
much  does  one  of  us  foresee  of  his  own  life  ?  Short 
way  ahead  of  us  it  is  all  dim ;  an  ?^;iwound  skein  of 
possibilities,  of  apprehensions,  attemptabilities,  vague- 
looming  hopes.  This  Cromwell  had  not  his  life  lying 
all  in  that  fashion  of  Program,  which  he  needed  then, 
with  that  unfathomable  cunning  of  his,  only  to  enact 
dramatically,  scene  after  scene  !  Not  so.  We  see  it 
so  ;  but  to  him  it  was  in  no  measure  so.  What  ab- 
surdities would  fall-away  of  themselves,  were  this  one 
undeniable  fact  kept  honestly  in  view  by  History ! 
Historians  indeed  will  tell  you  that  they  do  keep  it  in 
view  ;  —  but  look  whether  such  is  practically  the  fact ! 
Vulgar  History,  as  in  this  Cromwell's  case,  omits  it 
altogether ;  even  the  best  kinds  of  History  only  re- 
member it  now  and  then.  To  remember  it  duly  with 
rigorous  perfection,  as  in  the  fact  it  stood,  requires 
indeed  a  rare  faculty  ;  rare,  nay  impossible.  A  very 
Shakspeare    for  faculty ;  or  more  than  Shakspeare ; 


308  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

who  could  enact  a  brother  man's  biography,  see  with 
the  brother  man's  eyes  at  all  points  of  his  course  what 
things  he  saw ;  in  short,  hnow  his  course  and  him,  as 
few  '  Historians  '  are  like  to  do.  Half  or  more  of  all 
the  thick-plied  perversions  which  distort  our  image  of 
Cromwell,  will  disappear,  if  we  honestly  so  much  as 
try  to  represent  them  so  ;  in  sequence,  as  they  were  ; 
not  in  the  lump,  as  they  are  thrown-down  before  us. 

But  a  second  error,  which  I  think  the  generality 
commit,  refers  to  this  same  'ambition'  itself.  We  ex- 
aggerate the  ambition  of  Great  Men ;  we  mistake  wliat 
the  nature  of  it  is.  Great  Men  are  not  ambitious  in 
that  sense ;  he  is  a  small  poor  man  that  is  ambitious 
so.  Examine  the  man  who  lives  in  misery  because  he 
does  not  shine  above  other  men  ;  who  goes  about  pro- 
ducing himself,  pruriently  anxious  about  his  gifts  and 
claims  ;  struggling  to  force  everybod}'^,  as  it  were  beg- 
ging everybody  for  God's  sake,  to  acknowledge  him  a 
great  man,  and  set  him  over  the  heads  of  men  !•  Such 
a  creature  is  among  the  wretchedest  sights  seen  under 
tliis  sun.  A  great  man?  A  poor  morbid  prurient 
empty  man  ;  fitter  for  the  ward  of  a  hospital,  than  for 
a  throne  among  men.  I  advise  you  to  keep-out  of  his 
way.  He  cannot  walk  on  quiet  jjaths  ;  unless  you  will 
look  at  him,  wonder  at  him,  write  paragraphs  about 
him,  he  cannot  live.  It  is  the  emptiness  of  the  man, 
not  his  greatness.  Because  there  is  nothing  in  himself, 
he  hungers  and  thirsts  that  you  would  find  something 
in  him.  In  good  truth,  I  believe  no  great  man,  not  so 
much  as  a  genuine  man  who  had  health  and  real  sub- 
stance in  him  of  whatever  magnitude,  was  ever  much 
tormented  in  this  way. 


THE  HERD  AS  KING  ,309 

Your  Cromwell,  what  good  could  it  do  him  to  be 
*  noticed '  by  noisy  crowds  of  people  ?  God  his  maker 
already  noticed  him.  He,  Cromwell,  was  ali*eady  there ; 
no  notice  would  make  him  other  than  he  already  was. 
Till  his  hair  was  grown  gray ;  and  Life  from  the  down- 
hill slope  was  all  seen  to  be  limited,  not  infinite  but 
finite,  and  all  a  measurable  matter  hoio  it  went,  —  he 
had  been  content  to  plough  the  ground,  and  read  his 
Bible.  He  in  his  old  days  could  not  support  it  any 
longer,  without  selling  himseK  to  Falsehood,  that  he 
might  ride  in  gilt  carriages  to  Whitehall,^  and  have 
clerks  with  bundles  of  papers  haunting  him,  "  Decide 
this,  decide  that,"  which  in  utmost  sorrow  of  heart  no 
man  can  perfectly  decide  !  What  could  gilt  cal-riages 
do  for  this  man  ?  From  of  old,  was  there  not  in  his 
life  a  weight  of  meaning,  a  terror  and  a  splendour 
as  of  Heaven  itself?  His  existence  there  as  man 
set  him  beyond  need  of  gilding.  Death,  Judgment 
and  Eternity  :  these  already  lay  as  the  background  of 
whatsoever  he  thought  or  did.  All  his  life  lay  begirt 
as  in  the  sea  of  nameless  Thoughts,  which  no  speech 
of  a  mortal  could  name.  God's  AVord,  as  the  Puritan 
prophets  of  that  time  had  read  it :  this  was  great,  and 
all  else  was  little  to  him.  To  call  such  a  man  '  ambi- 
tious,' to  figure  him  as  the  prurient  windbag  described 
above,  seems  to  me  the  poorest  solecism.  Such  a  man 
will  say :  "  Keep  your  gilt  carriages  and  huzzaing  mobs, 
keep  your  red-tape  clerks,  your  influentialities,  your 
important  businesses.  Leave  me  alone,  leave  me  alone ; 
there  is  too  much  of  life  in  me  already !  "   Old  Samuel 

^  Royal  residence  iu  Loudon  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries. 


310.  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

Johnson,  the  greatest  soul  in  England  in  his  day,  was 
not  ambitions.  '  Corsica  Boswell '  ^  flaunted  at  public 
shows  with  printed  ribbons  round  his  hat ;  but  the 
great  old  Samuel  stayed  at  home.  The  world-wide 
soul  wrapt-up  in  its  thoughts,  in  its  sorrows ;  —  what 
would  paradings,  and  ribbons  in  the  hat,  do  for  it  ? 

Ah  yes,  I  will  say  again :  The  great  silent  men  ! 
Looking  round  on  the  noisy  inanity  of  the  world, 
words  with  little  meaning,  actions  with  little  worth, 
one  loves  to  reflect  on  the  great  Empire  of  Silence. 
The  noble  silent  men,  scattered  here  and  there,  each 
in  his  department ;  silently  thinking,  silently  work- 
ing ;  whom  no  Morning  Newspaper  makes  mention  of ! 
They  are  the  salt  of  the  Earth.  A  country  that  has 
none  or  few  of  these  is  in  a  bad  way.  Like  a  forest 
which  had  no  roots  ;  which  had  all  turned  into  leaves 
and  boughs  ;  —  which  must  soon  wither  and  be  no  for- 
est. Woe  for  us  if  we  had  nothing  but  what  we  can 
show,  or  speak.  Silence,  the  great  Empire  of  Silence: 
higher  than  the  stars  ;  deeper  than  the  Kingdoms  of 
Death !  It  alone  is  great ;  all  else  is  small.  —  I  hope 
we  English  will  long  maintain  our  grand  talent  pour 
le  silence.  Let  others  that  cannot  do  without  stand- 
ing on  barrelheads,  to  spout,  and  be  seen  of  all  the 
market-place,  cultivate  speech  exclusively,  —  become 
a  most  green  forest  without  roots  !  Solomon  says. 
There  is  a  time  to  speak;  but  also  a  time  to  keep 
silence.^   Of  some  great  silent  Samuel,  not  urged  to 

1  Bozzy  earned  the  title  by  his  enthusiasm  for  Corsica  in  her 
fight  for  independence  from  France  in  the  1760's. 

^  To  every  thing  there  is  a  season,  and  a  time  to  every  purpose 
under  the  heaven  ;  .  .  .  A  time  to  rend,  and  a  time  to  sew;  a 
time  to  keep  silence,  and  a  time  to  speak.    Eccles.  iii,  1,  7. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  311 

writing,  as  old  Samuel  Johnson  says  he  was,  by  want 
of  money ^  and  nothing-  other,  one  might  ask,  "  Why 
do  not  you  too  get  up  and  speak ;  promulgate  your  sys- 
tem, found  your  sect?"  "Truly,"  he  will  answer,  "I  am 
continent  of  my  thought  hitherto  ;  happily  I  have  yet 
had  the  ability  to  keep  it  in  me,  no  compulsion  strong 
enough  to  speak  it.  My  '  system  '  is  not  for  promul- 
gation first  of  all ;  it  is  for  serving  myself  to  live  by. 
That  is  the  great  purpose  of  it  to  me.  And  then  the 
'  honour '  ?  Alas,  yes  ;  —  but  as  Cato  said  of  the  statue : 
So  many  statues  in  that   Forum  of  yours,  may  it  not 

be  better  if  they  ask.  Where  is  Cato's  ^  statue?" 

But  now,  by  way  of  counterpoise  to  this  of  Silence, 
let  me  say  that  there  are  two  kinds  of  ambition  ;  one 
wholly  blamable,  the  other  laudable  and  inevitable. 
Nature  has  provided  that  the  great  silent  Samuel  shall 
not  be  silent  too  long.  The  selfish  wish  to  shine  over 
others,  let  it  be  accounted  altogether  poor  and  miser- 
able. '  Seekest  thou  great  things?  seek  them  not :  '  2 
this  is  most  true.  And  yet,  I  say,  there  is  an  irrepressi- 
ble tendency  in  every  man  to  develop  himself  according 
to  the  magnitude  which  Nature  has  made  him  of  ;  to 
speak-out,  to  act-out,  what  Nature  has  laid  in  him. 
This  is  proper,  fit,  inevitable ;  nay  it  is  a  duty,  and 
even  the  summary  of  duties  for  a  man.  The  meaning 
of  life  here  on  earth  might  be  defined  as  consisting 
in  this  :  To  unfold  your  self,  to  work  what  thing  you 
have  the  faculty  for.    It  is  a  necessity  for  the  human 

1  The  Elder,  called  "  The  Censor  "  (c.  234-149,  B.  c);  Roman 
statesman  and  author. 

^  And  seekest  thou  great  things  for  thyself  ?  seek  them  not. 
Jer.  xlv,  5. 


312  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

being,  the  first  law  of  our  existence.  Coleridge  beauti- 
fully remarks  that  the  infant  learns  to  speak  by  this 
necessity  it  feels.  —  We  will  say  therefore :  To  decide 
about  ambition,  whether  it  is  bad  or  not,  you  have  two 
things  to  take  into  view.  Not  the  coveting  of  the 
place  alone,  but  the  fitness  of  the  man  for  the  place 
withal :  that  is  the  question.  Perhaps  the  place  was 
his  ;  perhaps  he  had  a  natural  right,  and  even  obli- 
gation, to  seek  the  place !  Mirabeau's  ambition  to  be 
Prime  Minister,  how  shall  we  blame  it,  if  he  were  '  the 
only  man  in  France  that  could  have  done  any  good 
there'?  Hopefuler  perhaps  had  he  not  so  clearly  /V/i 
how  much  good  he  could  do !  But  a  poor  Necker,^ 
who  could  do  no  good,  and  had  even  felt  that  he 
could  do  none,  yet  sitting  broken-hearted  because  they 
had  flung  him  out,  and  he  was  now  quit  of  it,  well 
niight  Gibbon  ^  mourn  over  him.  —  Nature,  I  say,  has 
provided  amply  that  the  silent  great  man  shall  strive 
to  speak  withal ;  too  amply,  rather ! 

Fancy,  for  example,  you  had  revealed  to  the  brave 
old  Samuel  Johnson,  in  his  shrouded-up  existence,  that 
it  was  possible  for  him  to  do  priceless  divine  work  for 
his  country  and  the  whole  world.  That  the  perfect 
Heavenly  Law  might  be  made  Law  on  this  Earth ; 
that  the  prayer  he  prayed  daily, '  Thy  kingdom  come,' 
was  at  length  to  be  fulfilled  !  If  you  had  convinced  his 
judgment  of  this  ;  that  it  was  possible,  practicable  ;  that 
he  the  mournful  silent  Samuel  was  called  to  take  a 

^  1732-1804.  It  was  his  dismissal  from  control  of  the  finances 
of  France  that  aroused  Desmoiilins.  (See  p.  278,  n.  1.) 

2  1737-1794;  author  of  The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire  (1776-1788). 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  313 

part  In  it !  Would  not  the  whole  soul  of  the  man  have 
flamed-up  into  a  divine  clearness,  into  noble  utterance 
and  determination  to  act ;  casting  all  sorrows  and  mis- 
givings under  his  feet,  counting  all  affliction  and  con- 
tradiction small,  —  the  whole  dark  element  of  his  exist- 
ence blazing  into  articulate  radiance  of  light  and 
lightning  ?  It  were  a  true  ambition  this  !  And  think 
now  how  it  actually  was  with  Cromwell.  From  of 
old,  the  sufferings  of  God's  Church,  true  zealous 
Preachers  of  the  truth  flung  into  dungeons,  whipt,  set 
on  pillories,  their  ears  cropt-off,  God's  Gospel-cause 
trodden  under  foot  of  the  unworthy  :  all  this  had  lain 
heavy  on  his  soul.  Long  years  he  had  looked  upon  it, 
in  silence,  in  prayer ;  seeing  no  remedy  on  Earth ; 
trusting  well  that  a  remedy  in  Heaven's  goodness 
would  come,  —  that  such  a  course  was  false,  unjust,  and 
could  not  last  forever.  And  now  behold  the  dawn  of 
it ;  after  twelve  years  silent  waiting,  all  England  stirs 
itself  ;  there  is  to  be  once  more  a  Parliament,^  the 
Right  will  get  a  voice  for  itself :  inexpressible  well- 
grounded  hope  has  come  again  into  the  Earth.  Was 
not  such  a  Parliament  worth  being  a  member^of? 
Cromwell  threw  down  his  ploughs,  and  hastened 
thither. 

He  spoke  there, —  rugged  bursts  of  earnestness,  of 
a  seK-seen  truth,  where  we  get  a  glimpse  of  them.  He 
worked  there  ;  he  fought  and  strove,  like  a  strong  true 

^  In  1640.  The  Short  Parliament  sat  for  three  weeks,  in  the 
spring.  In  the  autumn  the  Long  Parliament  convened  ;  being 
"purged  "  in  1648  of  members  inclining  to  treat  with  Charles, 
it  received  the  name  of  "  The  Rump  ; "  it  was  forcibly  dissolved 
by  Cromwell  in  1653  ;  restored  in  1659,  it  was  finally  dissolved 
the  next  year. 


314  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

giant  of  a  man,  through  cannon-tumult  and  all  else, — 
on  and  on,  till  the  Cause  triutuphed,  its  once  so  for- 
midable enemies  all  swept  from  before  it,  and  the  dawn 
of  hope  had  become  clear  light  of  victory  and  certainty. 
That  he  stood  there  as  the  sti'ongest  soul  of  England, 
the  undisputed  Hero  of  all  England,  -^  what  of  this  ? 
It  was  possible  that  the  Law  of  Christ's  Gospel  could 
now  establish  itself  in  the  world !  The  Theocracy 
which  John  Knox  in  his  puljjit  might  dream  of  as  a 
'  devout  imagination,'  this  jiractical  man,  experienced 
in  the  whole  chaos  of  most  rough  practice,  dared  to 
consider  as  capable  of  being  realised.  Those  that  were 
highest  in  Christ's  Church,  the  devoutest  wisest  men, 
were  to  rule  the  land  :  in  some  considerable  degree,  it 
might  be  so  and  should  be  so.  Was  it  not  true,  God's 
truth  ?  And  if  true,  was  it  not  then  the  very  thing  to 
do  ?  The  strongest  practical  intellect  in  England  dared 
to  answer,  Yes  !  This  I  call  a  noble  true  purpose  ;  is 
it  not,  in  its  own  dialect,  the  noblest  that  could  enter 
into  the  heart  of  Statesman  or  man  ?  For  a  Knox  to 
take  it  up  was  something ;  but  for  a  Cromwell,  with 
his  great  sound  sense  and  experience  of  what  our  world 
was, —  History,  I  think,  shows  it  oxAj  this  once  in  such 
a  degree.  I  account  it  the  culminating  point  of  Pro- 
testantism ;  the  most  heroic  phasis  that  '  Faith  in  the 
Bible  '  was  appointed  to  exhibit  here  below.  Fancy  it  : 
that  it  were  made  manifest  to  one  of  us,  how  we  could 
make  the  Right  supremely  victorious  over  Wrong,  and 
all  that  we  had  longed  and  prayed  for,  as  the  highest 
good  to  England  and  all  lands,  an  attainable  fact ! 

Well,  I  must  say,  the  vulpine  intellect,  with  its  know- 
ingness,   its    alertness  and    expertness    in   '  detecting 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  315 

hypocrites,'  seems  to  me  a  rather  sorry  business.  We 
have  had  but  one  such  Statesman  in  England ;  one 
man,  that  I  can  get  sight  of,  who  ever  had  in  the 
heart  of  him  any  such  purpose  at  all.  One  man,  in 
the  course  of  fifteen-hundred  years ;  and  this  was  his 
welcome.  He  had  adherents  by  tlie  hundred  or  the 
ten ;  opponents  by  the  million.  Had  England  rallied 
all  round  him,  —  why,  then,  England  might  have  been 
a  Christian  land !  As  it  is,  vulpine  knowingness  sits 
yet  at  its  hopeless  problem, '  Given  a  world  of  Knaves, 
to  educe  an  Honesty  from  their  united  action ; '  — 
how  cumbrous  a  problem,  you  may  see  in  Chancery  ^ 
Law-Courts,  and  some  other  places !  Till  at  length, 
by  Heaven's  just  anger,  but  also  by  Heaven's  great 
grace,  the  matter  begins  to  stagnate  ;  and  this  prob- 
lem is  becoming  to  all  men  a  palpably  hopeless  one.  — 

But  with  regard  to  Cromwell  and  his  purposes  : 
Hume,^  and  a  multitude  following  him,  come  upon  me 
here  with  an  admission  that  Cromwell  was  sincere  at 
first ;  a  sincere  '  Fanatic '  at  first,  bixt  gradually  be- 
came a  '  Hypocrite '  as  things  opened  round  him. 
This  of  the  Fanatic-Hy]:)ocrite  is  Hume's  theory  of  it ; 
extensively  applied  since,  —  to  Mahomet  and  many 
others.  Think  of  it  seriously,  you  will  find  something 
in  it ;  not  much,  not  all,  very  far  from  all.  Sincere 
hei'o  hearts  do  not  sink  in  -this  miserable  manner.  The 
Sun  flings-forth  impurities,  gets  balefuUy  incrusted 
with  spots ;  but  it  does  not  quench  itself,  and  become 
no  Sun  at  all,  but  a  mass  of  Darkness  !    I  will  venture 

^  The  highest  court  of  justice  in  Great  Britain. 

2  In  Histary  of  England  (1G54-1661).    See  p.  204,  n.  2. 


316  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

to  say  that  such  never  befell  a  great  deep  Cromwell ; 
I  think,  never.  Nature's  own  lion-hearted  Son  ;  An- 
taeus-like,^ his  strength  is  got  by  touching  the  Earthy 
his  Mother ;  lift  him  up  from  the  Earth,  lift  him  up 
into  Hypocrisy,  Inanity,  his  strength  is  gone.  We  will 
not  assert  that  CromweU  was  an  immaculate  man;  that 
he  fell  into  no  faults,  no  insincerities  among  the  rest. 
He  was  no  dilettante  professor  of  '  perfections,'  '  im- 
maculate conducts.'  He  was  a  rugged  Orson,^  rend- 
ing his  rough  way  through  actual  true  v)orh,  —  doubt- 
less with  many  a  fall  therein.  Insincerities,  faults, 
very  many  faults  daily  and  hourly :  it  was  too  well 
known  to  him ;  known  to  God  and  him !  The  Sim 
was  dimmed  many  a  time  ;  but  the  Sun  had  not  him- 
self grown  a  Dimness.  Cromwell's  last  words,  as  he 
lay  waiting  for  death,  are  those  of  a  Christian  heroic 
mkn.  Broken  prayers  to  God,  that  He  would  judge 
him  and  this  Cause,  He  since  man  could  not,  in  justice 
yet  in  pity.  They  are  most  touching  words.  He 
breathed-out  his  wild  great  soul,  its  toils  and  sins  aU 
ended  now,  into  the  presence  of  his  Maker,  in  this 
manner. 

I,  for  one,  will  not  call  the  man  a  Hypocrite !  Hy- 
pocrite, mummer,  the  life  of  him  a  mere  theatricality ; 
empty  barren  quack,  hungry  for  the  shouts  of  mobs  ? 
The  man  had  made  obscurity  do  very  well  for  him 
tiU  his  head  was  gi'ay ;  and.  now  he  %cas^  there  as  he 
stood  recognised  unblamed,  the  virtual  King  of  Eng- 

'  Mythical  Giant,  son  of  Earth, who  in  wrestling  received  fresh 
strength  from  every  fall  upon  his  mother. 

"  Carried  off  by  a  bear  and  bi-ought  up  in  rough  forest  sav- 
agery; bis  twin  brother  Valentine  was  brought  up  at  court. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  31T 

land.  Cannot  a  man  do  without  King's  Coaches  and 
Cloaks  ?  Is  it  such  a  blessedness  to  have  clerks  for- 
ever pestering  you  with  bundles  of  papers  in  red  tape  ? 
A  simple  Diocletian  ^  prefers  planting  of  cabbages ;  a 
George  Washington,  no  very  immeasurable  man,  does 
the  like.  One  would  say,  it  is  what  any  genuine  man 
could  do ;  and  would  do.  The  instant  his  real  work 
were  out  in  the  matter  of  Kingship,  —  away  with  it ! 
Let  us  remark,  meanwhile,  how  indispensable  every- 
where a  King  is,  in  all  movements  of  men.  It  is  strik- 
ingly shown,  in  this  very  War,  what  becomes  of  men 
when  they  cannot  find  a  Cliief  Man,  and  their  enemies 
can.  The  Scotch  Nation  was  all  but  imanimous  in 
Puritanism  ;  zealous  and  of  one  mind  about  it,  as  in 
this  English  end  of  the  Island  was  always  far  from 
being  the  case.  But  there  was  no  great  CromweU 
among  them  ;  poor  tremulous,  hesitating,  diplomatic 
Argyles  ^  and  suchlike  :  none  of  them  had  a  heart  true 
enough  for  the  truth,  or  durst  commit  himself  to  the 
truth.  They  had  no  leader  ;  and  the  scattered  Cava- 
lier party  in  that  country  had  one  :  Montrose,^  the 
noblest  of  all  the  Cavaliers ;  an  accomplished,  gallant- 
hearted,  splendid  man ;  what  one  may  call  the  Hero- 
Cavalier.  WeU,  look  at  it;  on  the  one  hand  subjects 
without  a  King ;  on  the  other  a  King  without  sub- 
jects I  The  subjects  without  King  can  do  nothing  ;  the 
subjectless  King  can  do  something.    This  Montrose, 

1  245-313;  he  was  Emperor  of  Rome,  but  abdicated  and  re- 
turned to  his  cabbages,  —  and  philosophy. 

■■^  Marquis  of  Argyle,  1598-1661  (executed);  utterly  defeated 
by  Montrose  in  1645.     Character  as  stated  by  Carlyle. 

3  Marquis  of  Montrose,  1612-1650  (executed).  See  Scott's 
Legend  of  Montrose. 


318  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

with  a  handful  of  Irish  oi-  Highhind  savages,  few  of 
them  so  much  as  guns  in  their  hands,  dashes  at  the 
drilled  Puritan  armies  like  a  wild  whirlwind  ;  sweeps 
them,  time  after  time,  some  five  times  over,  from  the 
field  before  him.  He  was  at  one  period,  for  a  short 
while,  master  of  all  Scotland.  One  man  ;  but  he  was 
a  man :  a  million  zealous  men,  but  icithovt  the  one  ; 
they  against  him  were  powerless !  Perhaps  of  all  the 
persons  in  that  Puritan  struggle,  from  first  to  last,  the 
single  indispensable  one  was  verily  Cromwell.  To  see 
and  dare,  and  decide ;  to  be  a  fixed  pillar  in  the  welter 
of  uncei'tainty ;  —  a  King  among  them,  whether  they 
called  him  so  or  not. 

Precisely  here,  however,  lies  the  rub  ^  for  Cromwell. 
His  other  proceedings  have  all  found  adVocates,  and 
stand  generally  justified ;  but  this  dismissal  of  the 
Rump  Parliament  2  and  assumption  of  the  Protector- 
ship, is  what  no  one  can  pardon  him.  He  had  fairly 
grown  to  be  King  in  England  ;  Chief  Man  of  the  vic- 
torious party  in  England:  but  it  seems  he  could  not  do 
without  the  King's  Cloak,  and  sold  himself  to  perdition 
in  order  to  get  it.    Let  us  see  a  little  how  this  was. 

England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  all  lying  now  subdued 
at  the  feet  of  the  Puritan  Parliament,  the  practical 
question  arose.  What  was  to  be  done  with  it?  IIow 
will  you  govern  these  Nations,  which  Providence  in  a 

1  Obstacle,  hindrance. 

To  sleep  :  perchance  to  dream  ;  ay,  there 's  the  rub  ; 
For  in  that  sleep  of  death  what  dreams  may  come. 

Hamlet,  iii,  i,  65,  66. 

2  See  p.  313,  n.  1. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  319 

wondrous  way  has  given-up  to  your  disposal  ?  Clearly 
those  hundred  surviving  members  of  the  Long  Parlia- 
ment, who  sit  there  as  supreme  authority,  cannot  con- 
tinue forever  to  sit.  What  is  to  be  done  ?  —  It  was  a 
question  which  theoretical  constitution-builders  may 
find  easy  to  answer ;  but  to  Cromwell,  looking  there 
into  the  real  practical  facts  of  it,  there  could  be  none 
more  complicated.  He  asked  of  the  Parliament,  What 
it  was  they  would  decide  upon?  It  was  for  the  Parlia- 
ment to  say.  Yet  the  Soldiers  too,  however  contrary 
to  Formula,  they  who  had  purchased  this  victory  with 
their  blood,  it  seemed  to  them  that  they  also  should 
have  something  to  say  in  it !  We  wiU  not  "  For  all  our 
fighting  have  nothing  but  a  little  piece  of  paper."  We 
understand  that  the  Law  of  God's  Gospel,  to  which 
He  through  us  has  given  the  victory,  shaU  establish 
itself,  or  try  to  establish  itself,  in  this  land  ! 

For  three  years,  CromweU  says,  this  question  had 
been  sounded  in  the  ears  of  the  Parliament.  They 
could  make  no  answer ;  nothing  but  talk,  talk.  Per- 
haps it  lies  in  the  nature  of  parliamentary  bodies ; 
perhaps  no  Parliament  could  in  such  case  make  any 
answer  but  even  that  of  talk,  talk !  Nevertheless  the 
question  must  and  shall  be  answered.  You  sixty  men 
there,  becoming  fast  odious,  even  despicable,  to  the 
whole  nation,  whom  the  nation  already  calls  Rump 
Parliament,  you  cannot  continue  to  sit  there :  who  or 
what  then  is  to  foUow  ?  '  Free  Parliament,'  right  of 
Election,  Constitutional  Formulas  of  one  sort  or  the 
other,  —  the  thing  is  a  hungry  Fact  coming  on  us, 
which  we  must  answer  or  be  devoured  by  it !  And  who 
are  you  that  prate  of  Constitutional  Formulas,  rights 


320  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

of  Parliament?  You  have  had  to  kill  your  King,  to 
make  Pride's  ^  Purges,  to  expel  and  banish  by  the  law 
of  the  stronger  whosoever  would  not  let  your  Cause 
prosper :  there  are  but  fifty  or  three-score  of  you  left 
there,  debating  in  these  days.  Tell  us  what  we  shall  do ; 
not  in  the  way  of  Formula,  but  of  practicable  Fact ! 

How  they  did  finally  answer,  remains  obscure  to  this 
day.  The  diligent  Godwin  ^  himself  admits  that  he  can- 
not make  it  out.  The  likeliest  is,  that  this  poor  Par- 
liament still  would  not,  and  indeed  could  not  dissolve 
and  disperse ;  that  when  it  came  to  the  point  of  actu- 
ally dispersing,  they  again,  for  the  tenth  or  twentieth 
time,  adjourned  it,  —  and  Cromwell's  patience  failed 
him.  But  we  will  take  the  favourablest  hypothesis  ever 
started  for  the  Parliament ;  the  favourablest,  though  I 
believe  it  is  not  the  true  one,  but  too  favourable. 

According  to  this  version :  At  the  uttermost  crisis, 
when  Cromwell  and  his  Officers  were  met' on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  fifty  or  sixty  Rump  Members  on  the 
other,  it  was  suddenly  told  Cromwell  that  the  Rump  in 
its  despair  was  answering  in  a  very  singular  way  ;  that 
in  their  splenetic  envious  despair,  to  keep-out  the  Army 
at  least,  these  men  were  hurrying  through  the  House  a 
kind  of  Reform  Bill,  —  Parliament  to  be  chosen  by  the 
whole  of  England ;  equable  electoral  division  into  dis- 
tricts ;  free  suffrage,  and  the  rest  of  it !  A  very  ques- 
tionable, or  indeed  for  thevi  an  unquestionable  thing. 
Reform  BiU,  free  suffrage  of  Englishmen  ?    Why,  the 

^  The  colonel  who  carried  out  Commander-in-chief  Fairfax's 
orders  for  the  "purging"  of  Parliament.    See  p.  313,  ii.  1. 

^  1756-1831;  author  of  A  History  of  the  Commonwealth  ;  noted 
for  his  radical  views;  father  of  Mary  Shelley,  the  wife  of  the  poet. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  321 

Royalists  themselves,  silenced  indeed  but  not  extermi- 
nated, perhaps  ontnuinher  us  ;  the  great  numerical  ma- 
jority of  England  was  always  indifferent  to  our  Cause, 
merely  looked  at  it  and  submitted  to  it.  It  is  in  weight 
and  force,  not  by  counting  of  heads,  that  we  are  the 
majority !  And  now  with  your  Formulas  and  Reform 
Bills,  the  whole  matter,  sorely  won  by  our  swords,  shall 
again  launch  itself  to  sea ;  become  a  mere  hope,  and 
likelihood,  small  even  as  a  likelihood  ?  And  it  is  not 
a  likelihood ;  it  is  a  certainty,  which  we  have  won,  by 
God's  strength  and  our  own  right  hands,  and  do  now 
hold  here.  CromweU  walked  down  to  these  refractoiy 
Members ;  interrupted  them  in  that  rapid  speed  of  their 
Reform  BiU ;  —  ordered  them  to  begone,  and  talk  there 
no  more. — Can  we  not  forgive  him  ?  Can  we  not  under- 
stand him  ?  John  Milton,  who  looked  on  it  all  near  at 
hand,i  could  applayd  him.  The  Reality  had  swept  the 
Formulas  away  before  it.  I  fancy,  most  men  who  were 
realities  in  England  might  see  into  the  necessity  of  that. 
The  strong  daring  man,  therefore,  has  set  aU  man- 
ner of  Formulas  and  logical  superficialities  against  him ; 
has  dared  appeal  to  the  genuine  Fact  of  this  England, 
Whether  it  will  support  him  or  not  ?  It  is  curious  to 
see  how  he  struggles  to  govern  in  some  constitutional 
way ;  find  some  Parliament  to  support  him  ;  but  can- 
not. His  first  Parliament,  the  one  they  call  Barebones's 
Parliament,  is,  so  to  speak,  a  Convocation  of  the  Nota- 
bles?  From  all  quarters  of  England  the  leading  Min- 

1  And  was  in  fact  Latin  Secretary  of  the  Council  of  State  under 
Cromwell.    See  add.  note. 

2  Council  of  prominent  persons  convoked  by  the  King  of  France. 
The  last  one,  which  Carlyle  doubtless  had  in  mind,  was  called 


322  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

isters  and  chief  Puritan  Officials  nominate  the  men 
most  distinguished  by  religious  reputation,  influence 
and  attachment  to  the  true  Cause :  these  are  assem- 
bled to  shape-out  a  plan.  They  sanctioned  what  was 
past ;  shaped  as  they  coidd  what  was  to  come.  They 
wei'e  scornfully  called  Barehones's  Parliament:  the 
man's  name,  it  seems,  was  not  Barebones,  but  Bar- 
bone,^ —  a  good  enough  man.  Nor  was  it  a  jest,  their 
work ;  it  was  a  most  serious  reality,  —  a  trial  on  the 
part  of  these  Puritan  Notables  how  far  the  Law  of 
Christ  coTild  become  the  Law  of  this  England.  There 
were  men  of  sense  among  them,  men  of  some  qual- 
ity ;  men  of  deep  piety  I  suppose  the  most  of  them 
were.  They  failed,  it  seems,  and  broke-down,  endeav- 
ouring to  reform  the  Court  of  Chancery!  They  dis- 
solved themselves,  as  incompetent ;  delivered-up  their 
p6wer  again  into  the  hands  of  the  Lord  General  Crom- 
well, to  do  with  it  what  he  liked  and  could. 

What  will  he  do  with  it  ?  The  Lord  General  Crom- 
well, '  Commander-in-chief  of  all  the  Forces  raised 
and  to  be  raised ; '  he  hereby  sees  himself,  at  this 
unexampled  juncture,  as  it'  were  the  one  available 
Authority  left  in  England,  nothing  between  England 
and  utter  Anarchy  but  him  alone.  Such  is  the  uiT- 
deniable  Fact  of  his  position  and  England's,  there  and 
then.  What  will  he  do  wdth  it  ?  After  deliberation,  he 
decides  that  he  will  accept  it ;  will  formally,  with  pub- 
lic solemnity,  say  and  vow  before  God  and  men,  "Yes, 

by  Louis  XVI  the  year  before  the  outbreak  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution. 

^  Praisegod  Barbone  (variously  spelled),  a  London  leather 
merchant,  was  a  member  of  the  so-called  "  Little  "  Parliament 
of  1653,  and  lent  it  his  memorable  name. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  323 

the  Fact  is  so,  and  I  will  do  the  best  I  can  with  it !  " 
Protectorship,  Instrument  of  Government,^  —  these 
are  the  external  forms  of  the  thing ;  worked  out  and 
sanctioned  as  they  could  in  the  circumstances  be,  by 
the  Judges,  by  the  leading  Official  people, '  Council  of 
Officers  and  Persons  of  interest  in  the  Nation  : '  and 
as  for  the  thing  itself,  undeniably  enough,  at  the  pass 
matters  had  now  come  to,  there  was  no  alternative  but 
Anarchy  or  that.  Puritan  England  might  accept  it  or 
not ;  but  Puritan  England  was,  in  real  truth,  saved 
from  suicide  thereby !  —  I  believe  the  Puritan  People 
did,  in  an  inarticulate,  grumbling,  yet  on  the  whole 
grateful  and  real  way,  accept  this  anomalous  act  of 
Oliver's ;  at  least,  he  and  they  together  made  it  good, 
and  always  better  to  the  last.  But  in  their  Parlia- 
mentary articulate  way,  they  had  their  difficulties,  and 
never  knew  fully  what  to  say  to  it !  — 

Oliver's  second  Parliament,^  properly  his  first  regu- 
lar Parliament,  chosen  by  the  rule  laid-down  in  the 
Instrument  of  Government,  did  assemble,  and  worked  ; 
—  but  got,  before  long,  into  bottomless  questions  as 
to  the  Protector's  right,  as  to  '  usurpation,'  and  so 
forth  ;  and  had  at  the  earliest  legal  day  to  be  dismissed. 
Cromwell's  concluding  Speech  to  these  men  is  a  remark- 
able one.  So  likewise  to  his  third  Parliament,^  in 
similar  rebuke  for  their  pedantries  and  obstinacies. 
Most;  rude,  chaotic,  all  these  Speeches  are ;  but  most 
earnest-looking.  You  would  say,  it  was  a  sincere  help- 
less   man ;    not    used  to    speah  the    great    inorganic 

1  A  constitution  drawn  up  by  a  council  of  Cromwell's  officers^ 
'^  September,  1654  ;  dismissed  in  the  following  January. 
^  September,  1G5G,  to  February,  1658. 


324  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

thought  of  him,  but  to  act  it  rather !  A  helplessness 
of  utterance,  in  such  bursting  fulness  of  meaning.  He 
talks  much  about  *  births  of  Providence : '  All  these 
changes,  so  many  victories  and  events,  were  not  fore- 
thoughts, and  theatrical  contrivances  of  men,  of  me  or 
of  men ;  it  is  blind  blasphemers  that  will  persist  in 
calling  them  so !  He  insists  with  a  heavy  sulphurous 
wrathful  emphasis  on  this.  As  he  well  might.  As  if  a 
Cromwell  in  that  dark  huge  game  he  had  been  playing, 
the  world  wholly  thrown  into  chaos  roimd  him,  had 
foreseen  it  all,  and  played  it  all  off  like  a  preeontrived 
puppetshow  by  wood  and  wire!  These  things  were 
foreseen  by  no  man,  he  says  ;  no  man  could  tell  what 
a  day  would  bring  forth :  they  were  '  births  of  Prov- 
idence,' God's  finger  guided  us  on,  and  we  came  at 
last  to  clear  height  of  victory,  God's  Cause  triumpliant 
ill  these  Nations ;  and  you  as  a  Parliament  could 
assemble  together,  and  say  in  what  manner  all  this 
could  be  organised^  reduced  into  rational  feasibility 
among  the  affairs  of  men.  You  were  to  help  with  your 
wise  counsel  in  doing  that.  "  You  have  had  such  an 
opportunity  as  no  Parliament  in  England  ever  had." 
Christ's  Law,  the  Right  and  True,  was  to  be  in  some 
measure  made  the  Law  of  this  land.  In  place  of  that, 
you  have  got  into  your  idle  pedantries,  constitution- 
alities,  bottomless  cavillings  and  questionings  about 
written  laws  for  my  coming  here  ;  —  and  would  send 
the  whole  matter  in  Chaos  again,  because  I  have  no 
Notary's  parclunent,  but  only  God's  voice  from  the 
battle-whirlwind,  for  being  President  among  you ! 
That  opportunity  is  gone  ;  and  we  know  not  when  it 
will  return.    You  have  had  your  constitutional  Logic  ; 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  325 

and  Mammon's  Law,  not  Christ's  Law,  rules  yet  in 
this  laud.  "  God  be  judge  between  you  and  me  !  " 
These  are  his  final  words  to  them :  Take  you  your 
constitution-formulas  in  your  hand  ;  and  I  my  mfor- 
mal  struggles,  purposes,  realities  and  acts ;  and  "  God 
be  judge  between  you  and  me  !  "  — 

We  said  above  what  shapeless,  involved  chaotic 
things  the  printed  Speeches  of  Cromwell  are.  Wil- 
fully ambiguous,  unintelligible,  say  the  most :  a  hypo- 
crite shrouding  himself  in  confused  Jesuitic  jargon ! 
To  me  they  do  not  seem  so.  I  will  say  rather,  they 
afforded  the  first  glimpses  I  could  ever  get  into  the 
reality  of  this  Cromwell,  nay  into  the  possibility  of 
him.  Try  to  believe  that  he  means  something,  search 
lovingly  what  that  may  be  :  you  will  find  a  real  speech 
lying  imprisoned  in  these  broken  rude  tortuous  utter- 
ances ;  a  meaning  in  the  great  heart  of  this  inarticu- 
late man !  You  will,  for  the  first  time,  begin  to  see 
that  he  was  a  man  ;  not  an  enigmatic  chimera,  unintel- 
ligible to  you,  incredible  to  you.  The  Histories  and 
Biographies  written  of  this  Cromwell,  written  in  shal- 
low sceptical  generations  that  could  not  know  or  con- 
ceive of  a  deep  believing  man,  are  far  more  obscure 
than  Cromwell's  Speeches.  You  look  through  them 
only  into  the  infinite  vague  of  Black  and  the  Inane. 
'  Heats  and  jealousies,'  sa3'^s  Lord  Clarendon  himself  : 
*  heats  and  jealousies,'  mere  crabbed  whims,  theories 
and  crotchets  ;  these  induced  slow  sober  quiet  English- 
men to  lay  down  their  ploughs  and  work ;  and  fly  into 
red  fury  of  confused  war  against  the  best-conditioned 
of  Kings  !  Try  if  you  can  find  that  true.  Scepticism 
writing  about  Belief  may  have  great  gifts ;  but  it  is 


326  LECTURES    ON   HEROES 

really  ultra  vires  there.  It  is  Blindness  laying-down 
the  Laws  of  Ojitics.  — 

Cromwell's  third  Parliament  split  on  the  same 
rock  as  his  second.  Ever  the  constitutional  Formula : 
How  came  you  there  ?  Show  us  some  Notary  parch- 
ment !  Blind  pedants  :  —  "  Why,  surely  the  same 
power  which  makes  you  a  Parliament,  that,  and 
something  more,  made  me  a  Protector!"  If  my  Pro- 
tectorship is  nothing,  what  in  the  name  of  wonder 
is  your  Parliamenteership,  a  reflex  and  creation  of 
that  ?  — 

Parliaments  having  failed,  there  remained  nothing 
but  the  way  of  Despotism.  Military  Dictators,  each 
with  his  district,  to  coerce  the  Royalist  and  other  gain- 
sayers,  to  govern  them,  if  not  by  act  of  Parliament, 
then  by  the  sword.  Formula  shall  not  carry  it,  while 
the  Reality  is  here  !  I  will  go  on  protecting  oppressed 
Protestants  abroad,  appointing  just  judges,  wise  man- 
agers, at  home,  cherishing  true  Gospel  ministers ; 
doing  the  best  I  can  to  make  England  a  Christian 
England,  greater  than  old  Rome,  the  Queen  of  Protes- 
tant Christianity  ;  I,  since  you  will  not  help  me  ;  I 
while  God  leaves  me  life  !  —  Why  did  he  not  give  it 
up ;  retire  into  obscurity  again,  since  the  Law  would 
not  acknowledge  him  ?  cry  several.  That  is  where 
they  mistake.  For  him  there  was  no  giving  of  it  up ! 
Prime  Ministers  have  governed  countries,  Pitt,  Pom- 
bal,i  Choiseul ;  ^  and  their  word  was  a  law  while  it 
held:  but  this  Prime  Minister  was  one  that  covld  not 
get  resigned.    Let  him  once  resign,  Charles    Stuart 

^  Portuguese  statesman  (1G99-1782). 
2  French  statesman  (1719-1785). 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  327 

and  the  Cavaliers  ^  waited  to  kill  him  ;  to  kill  the 
Cause  and  him.  Once  embarked,  there  is  no  retreat, 
no  return.  This  Prime  Minister  could  retire  no-whi- 
ther  except  into  his  tomb. 

One  is  sorry  for  Cromwell  in  his  old  days.  His 
complaint  is  incessant  of  the  heavy  burden  Providence 
has  laid  on  him.  Heavy  ;  which  he  must  bear  till  death. 
Old  Colonel  Hutchinson,^  as  his  wife  relates  it,  Hutch- 
inson, his  old  battle-mate,  coming  to  see  him  on  some 
indispensable  business,  much  against  his  will,  —  Crom- 
well '  follows  him  to  the  door,'  in  a  most  fraternal, 
domestic,  conciliatory  style :  begs  that  he  would  be 
reconciled  to  him,  his  old  brother  in  arms  ;  says  how 
much  it  grieves  him  to  be  misunderstood,  desei'ted  by 
true  fellow-soldiers,  dear  to  him  from  of  old :  the  rig- 
orous Hutchinson,  cased  in  his  Republican  formula,^ 
sullenly  goes  his  way.  —  And  the  man's  head  now 
white  ;  his  strong  arm  growing  weary  with  its  long 
work  !  I  think  always  too  of  his  poor  Mother,  now 
very  old,  living  in  that  Palace  of  his ;  a  right  brave 
woman ;  as  indeed  they  lived  all  an  honest  God-fear- 
ing Household  there :  if  she  heard  a  shot  go-off,  she 
thought  it  was  her  son  killed.  He  had  to  come  to  her 
at  least  once  a  day,  that  she  might  see  with  her  own 

eyes  that  he  was  yet  living.   The  poor  old  Mother  ! 

What  had  this  man  gained ;  what  had  he  gained  ? 
He  had  a  life  of  sore  strife  and  toil,  to  his  last  day.* 

^  Partisans  of  Charles  ;  the  partisans  of  Puritanism  were 
called  Roundheads. 

^  1616-1664  ;  one  of  the  Regicides. 

*  /.  e.,  having  scruples  against  one-man  rule. 

*  Cromwell,  worn  out  under  the  strain,  died  of  a  fever, 
September  3,  1658,  and  was  buried  in  Henry  VII's  Chapel  iu 


328  LECTURES    ON   HEROES 

Fame,  ambition,  place  in  History  ?  His  dead  body 
was  hung  in  chains  ;  his  '  place  in  History,'  —  place 
in  History  forsooth  !  —  has  been  a  place  of  ignominy, 
accusation,  blackness  and  disgrace ;  and  here,  this  day, 
who  knows  if  it  is  not  rash  in  me  to  be  among  the 
first  that  ever  ventured  to  pronounce  him  not  a  knave 
and  liar,  but  a  genuinely  honest  man  !  Peace  to  him. 
Did  he  not,  in  spite  of  all,  accomplish  much  for  us  ? 
We  walk  smoothly  over  his  great  rough  heroic  life ; 
step-over  his  body  sunk  in  the  ditch  there.  We  need 
not  sjmrn  it,  as  we  step  on  it !  —  Let  the  Hero  rest. 
It  was  not  to  men's  judgment  that  he  appealed ;  nor 
have  men  judged  him  very  well. 

Precisely  a  century  and  a  year  after  this  of  Puritan- 
ism had  got  itself  hushed-up  into  decent  composure, 
and  its  results  made  smooth,  in  1688,^  there  broke- 
out  a  far  deeper  explosion,  much  more  difficult  to 
hush -up,  known  to  all  mortals,  and  like  to  be  long 
known,  by  the  name  of  French  Revolution.  It  is  pro])- 
erly  the  third  and  final  act  of  Protestantism  ;  the 
explosive  confused  return  of  mankind  to  Reality  and 
Fact,  now  that  they  were  perishing  of  Semblance  and 
Sham.  We  call  our  English  Puritanism  the  second 
act :  "  Well  then,  the  Bible  is  true ;  let  us  go  by  the 
Bible  ! "    "  In  Church,"  said  Luther ;   "  In  Church  and 

Westminster  Abbey,  among  tbe  kings  of  England.  His  body  was 
exhumed,  January,  1G61,  and  hanged  on  the  gallows  at  Tyburn, 
the  place  of  criminal  execution.  It  was  afterwards  beheaded, 
and  the  head  set  upon  a  pole  on  top  of  Westminster  Hall.  See 
C.  Collins,  "  What  became  of  Cromwell  ?  "  in  Gentleman's  Mag- 
azine, 1881. 

1  See  p.  204,  n.  4;  205,  n.  2. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  329 

State,"  said  Cromwell,  "  let  us  go  by  what  actually  is 
God's  Truth."  Men  have  to  return  to  reality ;  they 
cannot  live  on  semblance.  The  French  Revolution,  or 
third  act,  we  may  well  call  the  final  one ;  for  lower 
than  that  savage  Sanscvlottism  ^  men  cannot  go.  They 
stand  there  on  the  nakedest  haggard  Fact,  undeniable 
in  all  seasons  and  circumstances ;  and  may  and  must 
begin  again  confidently  to  build-up  from  that.  The 
French  explosion,  like  the  English  one,  got  its  King, 
—  who  had  no  Notary  parchment  to  show  for  himself. 
We  have  still  to  glance  for  a  moment  at  Napoleon, 
our  second  modern  King. 

Napoleon  does  by  no  means  seem  to  me  so  great  a 
man  as  Cromwell.  His  enormous  victories  which 
reached  over  all  Europe,  while  Cromwell  abode  mainly 
in  our  little  England,  are  but  as  the  high  stilts  on 
which  the  man  is  seen  standing ;  the  stature  of  the 
man  is  not  altered  thereby.  I  find  in  him  no  such 
sincerity  as  in  Cromwell ;  only  a  far  inferior  sort. 
No  silent  walking,  through  long  years,  with  the  Awful 
Unnamable  of  this  Universe  ;  '  walking  with  God,'  as 
he  called  it ;  and  faith  and  strength  in  that  alone : 
latent  thought  and  valour,  content  to  lie  latent,  then 
burst  out  as  in  blaze  of  Heaven's  lightning !  Napoleon 
lived  in  an  age  when  God  was  no  longer  believed ; 
the  meaning  of  all  Silence,  Latency,  was  thought  to 
be  Nonentity :  he  had  to  begin  not  out  of  the  Puritan 
Bible,  but  out  of  poor  Sceptical  Encydopedies?  This 
was  the  length  the  man  carried  it.  Meritorious  to 
get  so  far.    His  compact,  prompt,  evei-yway  articulate 

1  See  p.  275,  ii.  1. 

2  See  p.  20,  u.  2. 


330  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

character  is  in  itself  perhaps  small,  compared  with 
our  great  chaotic  /particulate  Cromwell's.  Instead  of 
'  dumb  Prophet  struggling  to  speak,'  we  have  a 
poi-tentous  mixture  of  the  Quack  withal !  Hume's 
notion  of  the  Fanatic-Hypocrite,  with  such  truth  as  it 
has,  will  apply  much  better  to  Napoleon  than  it  did  to 
Cromwell,  to  Mahomet  or  the  like,  —  where  indeed 
taken  strictly  it  has  hardly  any  truth  at  all.  An  ele- 
ment of  blamable  ambition  shows  itself,  from  the  first, 
in  this  man ;  gets  the  victory  over  him  at  last,  and 
involves  him  and  his  work  in  ruin. 

'  False  as  a  bulletin  '  became  a  proverb  in  Napoleon's 
time.  He  makes  what  excuse  he  could  for  it :  that  it 
was  necessary  to  mislead  the  enemy,  to  keep-up  his 
own  men's  courage,  and  so  forth.  On  the  whole,  there 
are  no  excuses.  A  man  in  no  case  has  liberty  to  tell 
li6s.  It  had  been,  in  the  long-run,  better  for  Napoleon 
too  if  he  had  not  told  any.  In  fact,  if  a  man  have 
any  purpose  reaching  beyond  the  hour  and  day,  meant 
to  be  found  extant  next  day,  what  good  can  it  ever 
be  to  promulgate  lies  ?  The  lies  are  found-out ;  ruin- 
ous penalty  is  exacted  for  them.  No  man  will  believe 
the  liar  next  time  even  when  he  speaks  truth,  when  it 
is  of  the  last  importance  that  he  be  believed.  The 
old  cry  of  wolf !  —  A  Lie  is  7io-thing ;  you  cannot  of 
nothing  make  something  ;  you  make  nothing  at  last, 
and  lose  your  labour  into  the  bargain. 

Yet  Napoleon  had  a  sincerity :  we  are  to  distin- 
guish between  what  is  superficial  and  what  is  funda- 
mental in  insincerity.  Across  these  outer  manoeuver- 
ings  and  quackeries  of  his,  which  were  many  and  most 
blamable,  let  us  discern  withal  that  the  man  had  a 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  331 

certain  instinctive  ineradicable  feeling  for  reality ; 
and  did  base  himseK  upon  fact,  so  long  as  lie  had  any 
basis.  He  has  an  instinct  of  Nature  better  than  his 
culture  was.  His  savans,^  Bourrienne^  tells  us,  in 
that  voyage  to  Egyjit,^  were  one  evening  busily  occu- 
pied arguing  that  there  could  be  no  God.  They  had 
proved  it,  to  their  satisfaction,  by  all  manner  of  logic. 
Napoleon  looking  up  into  the  stars,  answers,  "Very 
ingenious,  Messieurs  :  but  who  made  all  that  ?  "  The 
Atheistic  logic  runs-off  from  him  like  water  ;  the  great 
Fact  stares  him  in  the  face  :  "  Who  made  all  that  ?  " 
So  too  in  Practice  :  he,  as  every  man  that  can  be 
great,  or  have  victory  in  this  world,  sees,  through  all 
entanglements,  the  practical  heart  of  the  matter ; 
drives  straight  towards  that.  When  the  steward  of 
his  Tuileries*  Palace  was  exhibiting  the  new  uphol- 
stery, with  praises,  and  demonstration  how  glorious  it 
was,  and  how  cheap  withal.  Napoleon,  making  little 
answer,  asked  for  a  pair  of  scissors,  dipt  one  of  the 
gold  tassels  from  a  window-curtain,  put  it  in  his 
pocket,  and  walked  on.  Some  days  afterwards,  he 
produced  it  at  the  right  moment,  to  the  horror  of  his 
upholstery  functionary  ;  it  was  not  gold  but  tinsel ! 
In  Saint  Helena,^  it  is  notable  how  he  still,  to  his 
last   days,  insists  on  the  practical,  the  real.    "  Why 

^  Scholars,  sages. 

^  17G9-1834.  Author  of  Memoires  ;  held  various  government 
positions  under  Napoleon  and  under  the  restored  Louis  XVIII. 

3  1798. 

*  "  Tile-yards,"  the  royal  palace  in  Paris,  destroyed  by  the 
mob  in  1871. 

^  Whither,  after  his  defeat  at  Waterloo,  June  18,  1815,  he 
was  sent  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 


332  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

talk  and  complain ;  above  all,  why  quarrel  with  one 
another  ?  There  is  no  result  in  it ;  it  comes  to  nothing 
that  one  can  do.  Say  nothing,  if  one  can  do  nothing ! " 
He  speaks  often  so,  to  his  poor  discontented  followers  ; 
lie  is  like  a  piece  of  silent  strength  in  the  middle  of 
their  morbid  querulousness  there. 

And  accordingly  was  there  not  what  we  can  call  a 
faith  in  him,  genuine  so  far  as  it  went  ?  That  this 
new  enormous  Democracy  asserting  itself  here  in  the 
French  Revolution  is  an  insuppressible  Fact,  which 
the  whole  world,  with  its  old  forces  and  institutions, 
cannot  put  down  ;  this  was  a  true  insight  of  his,  and 
took  his  conscience  and  enthusiasm  along  with  it,  — 
a  faith.  And  did  he  not  interpret  the  dim  purport  of 
it  well  ?  '  La  carricre  oiiverte  aux  talens,^  The  imple- 
ments to  him  who  can  handle  them : '  this  actually  is 
the  truth,  and  even  the  whole  truth;  it  includes  what- 
ever the  French  Revolution,  or  any  Revolution,  could 
mean.  Napoleon,  in  his  first  period,  was  a  true  Demo- 
crat. And  yet  by  the  nature  of  him,  fostered  too  by  his 
military  trade,  he  knew  that  Democracy,  if  it  were  a 
true  thing  at  all,  could  not  be  an  anarchy :  the  man 
had  a  heart-hatred  for  anarchy.  On  that  Twentieth 
of  June^  (1792),  Bourrienne  and  he  sat  in  a  coffee- 
house, as  the  mob  rolled  by  :  Napoleon  expresses  the 
deepest  contempt  for  persons  in  authority  that  they 
do  not  restrain  this  rabble.    On  the  Tenth  of  August  ^ 

^  Literally  :  The  career  (race-course)  open  to  the  talents. 

^  The  mob  invaded  the  Tuileries,  then  occupied  by  Louis  XVI. 

^  The  revolutionary  mob  made  a  more  violent  armed  assault 
on  the  palace,  and  massacred  about  800  of  the  Swiss  bodyguard 
of  the  King.  The  loyalty  of  the  Swiss  is  commemorated  by 
Thorwaldsen's  Lion  of  Lucerne. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  333 

he  wonders  why  there  is  no  man  to  comQiancl  these 
poor  Swiss ;  they  woukl  conquer  if  there  were.  Such 
a  faith  in  Democraey,  yet  hatred  of  anarchy,  it  is 
that  carries  Napoleon  through  all  his  great  work. 
Through  his  brilliant  Italian  Campaigns, ^  onwards  to 
the  Peace  of  Leoben,^  one  wovild  say,  his  inspiration 
is:  'Triumph  to  the  French  Revolution;  assertion  of  it 
against  these  Austrian  Simulacra  that  pretend  to  call 
it  a  Simulacrum ! '  Withal,  however,  he  feels,  and  has 
a  right  to  feel,  how  necessary  a  strong  Authority  is ; 
how  the  Revolution  cannot  prosper  or  last  without  such. 
To  bridle-in  that  great  devouring,  self -devouring  French 
Revolution  ;  to  tame  it,  so  that  its  intrinsic  purpose 
can  be  made  good,  that  it  may  become  organic^  and  be 
able  to  live  among  other  organisms  and  formed  things, 
not  as  a  wasting  destruction  alone  :  is  not  this  still 
what  he  partly  aimed  at,  as  the  true  purport  of  his 
life  ;  nay  what  he  actually  managed  to  do  ?  Through 
Wagrams,^  Austerlitzes  ;  ^  triumph  after  triumph,  — 
he  triumphed  so  far.  There  was  an  eye  to  see  i«  this 
man,  a  soul  to  dare  and  do.  He  rose  naturally  to  be 
the  King.  All  men  saw  that  he  was  such.  The  com- 
mon soldiers  used  to  say  on  the  march  :  "  These  bab- 
bling Avocats^  up  at  Paris ;  all  talk  and  no  work ! 
What  wonder  it  runs  all  wrong?  We  shall  have  to 
go  and  put  our  Petit  Caporal  there !  "    They  went, 

1  1796-1797. 

^  In  Austria,  1797,  between  Austria  and  the  French  Republic. 

3  Near  Vienna,  1809. 

*  Seventy  to  eighty  miles  NNE  of  Vienna.  One  of  Napo- 
leon's most  famous  battles,  in  which  he  defeated  a  superior  force 
of  Austrians  and  Russians  with  a  loss  of  c.  12,000  against  30,000. 
See  p.  108. 


334  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

and  put  liini  there  ;  tliey  and  France  at  large.  Chief- 
consulship,  Emperorship,  victoi-y  over  Europe  ;  —  till 
the  poor  Lieutenant  of  La  Fere}  not  unnaturally, 
might  seem  to  himself  the  greatest  of  all  men  that 
had  been  in  the  world  for  some  ages. 

But  at  this  point,  I  think,  the  fatal  charlatan-ele- 
ment got  the  upper  hand.  He  apostatised  from  his  old 
faith  in  Facts,  took  to  believing  in  Semblances  ;  strove 
to  connect  himself  with  Austrian  Dynasties,^  Pope- 
doms, with  the  old  false  Feudalities  which  he  once  saw 
clearly  to  be  false  ;  —  considered  that  he  would  found 
"his  Dynasty"  and  so  forth  ;  that  the  enormous  French 
Revolution  meant  only  that !  The  man  was  '  given-up 
to  strong  delusion,  that  he  should  believe  a  lie ; '  ^  a 
fearful  but  most  sure  thing.  He  did  not  know  true 
from  false  now  when  he  looked  at  them,  —  the  fearful- 
est 'penalty  a  man  pays  for  yielding  to  untruth  of  heart. 
Self  and  false  ambition  had  now  become  his  god :  self- 
deception  once  yielded  to,  all  other  deceptions  follow 
naturally  more  and  more.  What  a  paltry  patchwork 
of  theatrical  paper-mantles,  tinsel  and  mummery,  had 
this  man  wrapt  his  own  great  reality  in,  thinking  to 
make  it  more  real  thereby !  His  hollow  Pope's-  Con- 
cordat}  pretending    to  be  a  re-establishment  of  Ca- 

*  A  town  in  Aisne,  northern  France,  which  gives  name  to  a 
regiment  of  artillery.  Napoleon  was  lieutenant  in  this  regiment, 
1785-1791. 

^  Napoleon  divorced  Josephine  and  married  (1810)  Maria 
Louisa,  daughter  of  the  Emperor  of  Austria,  who  bore  him  a  son, 
"  The  King  of  Rome." 

^  And  for  this  cause  God  shall  send  them  strong  delusion,  that 
they  should  believe  a  lie.     2  Thess.  ii,  11. 

*  Between  Napoleon  and  Pius  VII,  providing  for  mutual 
official  recognition,  1801. 


OLIVER   CROMWELL 


From  the  painting  by  Robert  Walker  in  the  possession  of  the  Earl  of  Scaxiwich, 

Hinchingbrooke,  En gla nJ. 

Probably  painted  soon  after  the  beginning  of  the  Civil   W(rr,  when  Cromuell 

was  about  forty-four  years  old. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING       '  335 

tholicism,  felt  by  himself  to  be  the  method  of  extirpat- 
ing it,  '•'•la  vaccine^  de  la  religion:''''  his  ceremonial 
Coronations,  consecrations  by  the  old  Italian  Chimera 
in  Notre-Dame,"2  —  "  wanting  nothing  to  complete  the 
pomp  of  it,"  as  Augereau  ^  said,  "  nothing  but  the  half- 
niiUiou  of  men  who  had  died  to  put  an  end  to  all  that " ! 
Cromwell's  Inauguration  was  by  the  Sword  and  Bible  ; 
what  we  must  call  a  genuinely  true  one.  Sword  and 
Bible  were  borne  before  him,  without  any  chimera: 
were  not  these  the  real  emblems  of  Puritanism;  its  true 
decoration  and  insignia  ?  It  had  used  them  both  in  a 
very  real  manner,  and  pretended  to  stand  by  them  now! 
But  this,  poor  Napoleon  mistook :  he  believed  too  much 
in  the  Dujpeah'iUty  of  men ;  saw  no  fact  deeper  in  man 
than  Hunger  and  this !  He  was  mistaken.  Like  a 
man  that  should  build  upon  cloud ;  his  house  and  he  faU 
down  in  confused  wreck,  and  depart  oiit  of  the  world. 
Alas,  in  all  of  us  this  charlatan-element  exists  ;  and 
might  be  developed,  were  the  temptation  strong  enough. 
'  Lead  us  not  into  temptation  ' !  But  it  is  fatal,  I  say, 
that  it  he  developed.  The  thing  into  which  it  enters 
as  a  cognisable  ingredient  is  doomed  to  be  altogether 
transitory ;  and,  however  huge  it  may  looh^  is  in  itself 
small.  Napoleon's  working,  accordingly,  what  was  it 
with  all  the  noise  it  made  ?  A  flash  as  of  gunpowder 
wide-spread ;  a  blazing-up  as  of  dry  heath.    For  an 

^  Vaccination  to  secure  immunity  from  the  disease  of  reli- 
gion in  future. 

"  Cathedral  in  Paris,  where,  Decemher,  1804,  Napoleon  was 
crowned  Emperor  in  the  presence  of  the  Pope,  summoned  to  Paris 
for  the  purpose.  The  next  spring  he  was  crowned  King  of  Italy 
at  Milan. 

^  One  of  Napoleon's  generals  (1757-1816). 


336  LECTURES   ON  HEROES 

hour  the  whole  Universe  seems  wrapt  in  smoke  and 
flame  ;  but  only  for  an  hour.  It  goes  out :  the  Universe 
with  its  old  mountains  and  streams,  its  stars  above  and 
kind  soil  beneath,  is  still  there. 

The  Duke  of  Weimar  i  told  his  friends  always.  To 
be  of  courage ;  this  Napoleonism  was  unjust,  a  false- 
hood, and  could  not  last.  It  is  true  doctrine.  The 
heavier  this  Napoleon  trampled  on  the  world,  holding 
it  tyrannously  dowTi,  the  fiercer  would  the  world's  re- 
coil against  him  be,  one  day.  Injustice  pays  itself  with 
frightful  compound-interest.  I  am  not  sure  but  he  had 
better  have  lost  his  best  park  of  artillery,  or  had  his 
best  regiment  drowned  in  the  sea,  than  shot  that  poor 
German  Bookseller,  Palm  !  ^  It  was  a  palpable  tyran- 
nous murderous  injustice,  which  no  man,  let  him  paint 
an  inch  thick,  could  make-out  to  be  other.  It  burnt 
deep  into  the  hearts  of  men,  it  and  the  like  of  it ;  sup- 
pressed fire  flashed  in  the  eyes  of  men,  as  they  thought 
of  it,  —  waiting  their  day !  Which  day  came :  Ger- 
many rose  round  him.  —  What  Napoleon  did  will  in 
the  long-run  amoimt  to  what  he  did  justly  ;  what  Na- 
ture with  her  laws  will  sanction.  To  what  of  reality 
was  in  him ;  to  that  and  nothing  more.  The  rest  was 
all  smoke  and  waste.  La  carriere  ouverte  aux  talens: 
that  great  true  Message,  which  has  yet  to  articulate 
and  fulfil  itself  everywhere,  he  left  in  a  most  inar- 
ticulate state.  He  was  a  great  ebauche^  a  rude-draught 

1  Goethe's  friend  and  patron.  Goethe  resided  at  Weimar  for 
more  than  fifty  years;  and  he  and  Schiller  are  buried  there. 

2  Of  Nuremberg;  condemned  and  shot  (1806)  by  Napoleon's 
orders  for  selling  a  pamphlet  criticising  Napoleon  and  his 
troops. 

^  Rough  preliminary  sketch. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING  337 

never  completed ;  as  indeed  what  great  man  is  other  ? 
Left  in  too  rude  a  state,  alas ! 

His  notions  of  the  world,  as  he  expresses  them  there 
at  St.  Helena,  are  almost  tragical  to  consider.  He  seems 
to  feel  the  most  unaffected  surprise  that  it  has  all  gone 
so ;  that  he  is  flung-out  on  the  rock  here,  and  the  World 
is  stUl  moving  on  its  axis.  France  is  great,  and  all- 
great  ;  and  at  bottom,  he  is  France.  England  itself, 
he  says,  is  by  Nature  only  an  appendage  of  France ; 
"another  Isle  of  Oleron^  to  France."  So  it  was  by 
Nature^  by  Napoleon-Nature ;  and  yet  look  how  in  fact 
—  Here  am  I !  He  cannot  understand  it :  inconceiv- 
able that  the  reality  has  not  corresponded  to  his  pro- 
gram of  it ;  that  France  was  not  all-great,  that  he  was 
not  France.  '  Strong  delusion,'  that  he  should  believe 
the  thing  to  be  which  is  not !  The  compact,  clear-seeing, 
decisive  Italian  nature  of  him,  strong,  genuine,  which 
he  once  had,  has  enveloped  itself,  half-dissolved  itself, 
in  a  turbid  atmosphere  of  French  fanfaronade.  The 
world  was  not  disposed  to  be  troddeu-down  underfoot ; 
to  be  bound  into  masses,  and  built  together,  as  he 
liked,  for  a  pedestal  to  France  and  him :  the  world 
had  quite  other  purposes  in  view !  Napoleon's  aston- 
ishment is  extreme.  But  alas,  what  help  now?  He 
had  gone  that  way  of  his ;  and  Nature  also  had  gone 
her  way.  Having  once  parted  with  Reality,  he  tum- 
bles helpless  in  Vacuity ;  no  rescue  for  him.  He  had 
to  sink  there,  mournfully  as  man  seldom  did  ;  and 
break  his  great  heart,  and  die,^  —  this  poor  Napoleon : 

^  Off  the  west  coast  of  Frauce,  between  the  Loire  and  the 
Garonne. 

2  May  5, 1821. 


338  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

a  great  implement  too  soon  wasted,  till  it  was  useless : 
our  last  Great'  Man  ! 

Our  last,  in  a  double  sense.  For  here  finally  these 
wide  roamings  of  ours  through  so  many  times  and 
places,  in  search  and  study  of  Pleroes,  are  to  terminate. 
I  am  sorry  for  it :  there  was  pleasure  for  me  in  this 
business,  if  also  much  pain.  It  is  a  great  subject,  and 
a  most  grave  and  wide  one,  this  which,  not  to  be  too 
grave  about  it,  I  have  named  Hero-ivorship.  It  enters 
deeply,  as  I  think,  into  the  seci*et  of  Mankind's  waj^s 
and  vitalest  interests  in  this  world,  and  is  well  worth 
explaining  at  present.  With  six  months,  instead  of 
six  days,  we  might  have  done  better.  I  promised  to 
break-ground  on  it ;  I  know  not  whether  I  have  even 
managed  to  do  that.  I  have  had  to  tear  it  up  in  the 
rudest  manner  in  order  to  get  into  it  at  all.  Often 
enough,  with  these  abrupt  utterances  thrown-out  iso- 
lated, unexplained,  has  your  tolerance  been  put  to  the 
trial.  Tolerance,  patient  candour,  all-hoping  favour 
and  kindness,  which  I  will  not  speak  of  at  present. 
The  accomplished  and  distinguished,  the  beautiful,  the 
wise,  something  of  what  is  best  in  England,  have  lis- 
tened patiently  to  my  rude  words.  With  many  feel- 
ings, I  heartily  thank  you  all ;  and  say,  Good  be  with 
you  alll 


CARLYLE'S   SUMMARY 
LECTURE  I 

THE   HERO  AS   DIVINITY.     ODIN.     PAGANISM  :    SCANDINAVIAN 
MYTHOLOGY 

Heroes:  Universal  History  consists  essentially  of  their  united 
Biographies.  Religion  not  a  man's  church-creed,  but  his  practi- 
cal belief  about  himself  and  the  Universe:  Both  with  Men  and 
Nations  it  is  the  One  fact  about  them  which  creatively  deter- 
mines all  the  rest.  Heathenism:  Christianity:  Modern  Scepti- 
cism. The  Hero  as  Divinity.  Paganism  a  fact;  not  Quackery, 
nor  Allegory:  Not  to  be  pretentiously  'explained;'  to  be  looked 
at  as  old  Thought,  and  with  sympathy,  (p.  1.)  —  Nature  no  more 
seems  divine  except  to  the  Prophet  or  Poet,  because  men  have 
ceased  to  think:  To  the  Pagan  Thinker,  as  to  a  child-man,  all 
was  either  godlike  or  God.  Canopus:  Man.  Hero-worship  the 
basis  of  Religion,  Loyalty,  Society.  A  Hero  not  the  '  creature 
of  the  time:'  Hero-worship  indestructible.  Johnson:  Voltaire. 
(9.)  —  Scandinavian  Paganism  the  Religion  of  our  Fathers.  Ice- 
land, the  home  of  the  Norse  Poets,  described.  The  Edda.  The 
primary  characteristic  of  Norse  Paganism,  the  impersonation  of 
the  visible  workings  of  Nature.  Jotuns  and  the  Gods.  Fire: 
Frost :  Thunder  :  The  Sun  :  Sea-Tempest.  Mythus  of  the  Crea- 
tion: The  Life-Tree  Igdrasil.  The  modern  '■Machine  of  the 
Universe.'  (21.)  —  The  Norse  Creed,  as  recorded,  the  summation 
of  several  successive  systems:  Originally  the  shape  given  to  the 
national  thought  by  their  first  'Man  of  Genius.'  Odin:  He  has 
no  history  or  date;  yet  was  no  mere  adjective,  but  a  man  of 
flesh  and  blood.  How  deified.  The  World  of  Nature,  to  every 
man  a  Fantasy  of  Himself.  (29.)  — Odin  the  inventor  of  Runes, 
of  Letters  and  Poetry.  His  reception  as  a  Hero:  the  pattern 
Norse-Man;  a  God:  His  shadow  over  the  whole  History  of  his 
People.  (38.)-^  The  essence  of  Norse  Paganism  not  so  much 
Morality,  as  a  sincere  recognition  of  Nature:   Sincerity  better 


340  CARLYLE'S    SUMMARY 

than  Gracefulness.  The  Allegories,  the  after-creations  of  the 
Faith.  Main  practical  Belief:  Hall  of  Odin:  Valkyrs:  Destiny: 
Necessity  of  Valour.  Its  worth:  Their  Sea-Kings,  Woodcutter 
Kings,  our  spiritual  Progenitors.   The  growth  of  Odinism.    (42.) 

—  The  strong  simplicity  of  Norse  lore  quite  unrecognized  by 
Gray.  Thor's  veritable  Norse  rage:  Balder,  the  wliite  Sungod. 
How  the  old  Norse  heart  loves  the  Thunder-god,  and  sports  witli 
him.  Huge  Brobdingnag  genius,  needing  only  to  be  tanied-down, 
into  Shakspeares,  Goethes.  Truth  in  the  Norse  Songs:  This 
World  a  show.  Thor's  invasion  of  Jotunheim.  The  Ragnarok, 
or  Twilight  of  the  Gods:  The  Old  must  die,  that  the  New  and 
Better  may  be  born.  Tlior's  last  appearance.  The  Norse  Creed 
a  Consecration  of  Valour.  It  and  tlie  whole  Past  a  possession  of 
the  Present.  (47.) 

LECTURE  II 

THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.     MAHOMET  :    ISLAM 

The  Hero  no  longer  regarded  as  a  God,  but  as  one  god-inspired. 
All  Heroes  primarily  of  the  same  stuff;  differing  according  to 
their  reception.  The  welcome  of  its  Heroes,  the  truest  test  of 
an  epoch.  Odin:  Burns,  (p.  58.)  —  Mahomet  a  true  Prophet; 
uot  a  scheming  Impostor.  A  Great  Man,  and  therefore  first  of 
all  a  sincere  man:  No  man  to  be  judged  merely  by  his  faults. 
David  the  Hebrew  King.  Of  all  acts  for  man  repentance  the 
most  divine:  The  deadliest  sin,  a  supercilious  consciousness  of 
none.  (60.)  —  Arabia  described.  The  Arabs  always  a  gifted 
people;  of  wild  strong  feelings,  and  of  iron  restraint  over  these. 
Their  Religiosity:  Their  Star-worship:  Their  Prophets  and  in- 
spired men;  from  Job  downwards.  Their  Holy  Places.  Mecca, 
its  site,  history  and  government.  (65.) — Mahomet.  His  youth: 
His  fond  Grandfather.  Had  no  book-learning:  Travels  to  the 
Syrian  Fairs;  and  first  comes  in  contact  with  the  Christian 
Religion.  An  altogether  solid,  brotherly,  genuine  man:  A  good 
laugh,  and  a  good  flash  of  anger  in  him  withal.  (71.)  —  Marries 
Kadijah.  Begins  his  Prophet-career  at  forty  years  of  age.  Allah 
Akhar ;  God  is  great:  Islam;  we  must  submit  to  God.  Do  we 
not  all  live  in  Islam?  Mahomet,  'the  Prophet  of  God.'    (74.) 

—  The  good  Kadijah  believes  in  him:  Mahomet's  gratitude. 
His  slow  progress:  Among  forty  of  his  kindred,  young  All  alone 


CARLYLE'S    SUMMARY  341 

joined  him.  His  good  Uncle  expostulates  with  him:  Mahomet, 
bursting  into  tears,  persists  in  his  mission.  The  Hegira.  Pro- 
pagating by  the  sword:  First  get  your  sword:  A  thing  will  pro- 
pagate itself  as  it  can.  Nature  a  just  umpire.  Mahomet's  Creed 
unspeakably  better  than  the  wooden  idolatries  and  jangling 
Syrian  Sects  extirpated  by  it.  (79.)  — The  Koran,  the  universal 
standard  of  Mahometan  life:  An  imperfeeth%  badly  written, 
but  genuine  book:  Enthusiastic  extempore  preaching,  amid  the 
hot  haste  of  wrestling  with  flesh-and-blood  and  spiritual  enemies. 
Its  direct  poetic  insight.  The  World,  Man,  human  Compassion; 
all  wholly  miraculous  to  Mahomet.  (88.)  —  His  religion  did  not 
succeed  by  '  being  easy: '  None  can.  The  sensual  part  of  it  not  of 
Mahomet's  making.  He  himself,  frugal;  patched  his  own  clothes; 
proved  a  hero  in  rough  actual  trial  of  twenty-three  years. 
Traits  of  his  generosity  and  resignation.  His  total  freedom  from 
cant.  (96.)  —  His  moral  precepts  not  always  of  the  superfinest 
sort;  yet  is  there  always  a  tendency  to  good  in  them.  His  Heaven 
and  Hell  sensual,  yet  not  altogether  so.  Infinite  Nature  of  Duty. 
The  evil  of  sensuality,  in  the  slavery  to  pleasant  things,  not  in 
the  enjoyment  of  them.  Mahometanism  a  religion  heartily  be- 
lieved. To  the  Arab  Nation  it  was  as  a  birth  from  darkness  into 
light:  Arabia  first  became  alive  by  means  of  it.    (101.) 

LECTURE  III 

THE    HERO    AS     POET.    DANTE  ;   SHAKSPEARE 

The  Hero  as  Divinity  or  Prophet,  inconsistent  with  the  mod- 
ern progress  of  science:  The  Hero  Poet,  a  figure  common  to  all 
ages.  All  Heroes  at  bottom  the  same;  the  different  sphere  con- 
stituting the  grand  distinction:  Examples.  Varieties  of  apti- 
tude, (p.  107.) —  Poet  and  Prophet  meet  in  Vates:  Their  Gospel 
the  same,  for  the  Beautiful  and  the  Good  are  one.  All  men 
somewhat  of  poets;  and  the  highest  Poets  far  from  perfect. 
Prose,  and  Poetry  or  musical  Thought.  Song  a  kind  of  inarticu- 
late unfathomable  speech:  All  deep  things  are  Song.  The  Hero 
as  Divinity,  as  Prophet,  and  then  only  as  Poet,  no  indication  that 
our  estimate  of  the  Great  Man  is  diminishing  :  The  Poet  seems 
to  be  losing  caste,  but  it  is  rather  that  our  notions  of  God  are 
rising  higher.  (110.)  —  Shakspeare  and  Dante,  Saints  of  Poetry. 


342  CARLYLE'S    SUMMARY 

Dante:  His  history,  in  his  Book  and  Portrait.  His  scholastic 
education,  and  its  fruit  of  subtlety.  His  miseries:  Love  of 
Beatrice:  His  marriage  not  happy.  A  banished  man:  AVill 
never  return,  if  to  plead  guilty  be  the  condition.  His  wander- 
ings: 'Come  e  duro  calle.'  At  the  Court  of  Delia  Scala.  The 
great  soul  of  Dante,  homeless  on  earth,  made  its  home  more 
and  more  in  Eternity.  His  mystic,  unfathomable  Song.  Death: 
Buried  at  Ravenna.  (HC.)  —  His  Divina  Commedia  a  Song:  Go 
deep  enough,  there  is  music  everywhere.  The  sincerest  of  Poems: 
It  has  all  been  as  if  molten,  in  the  hottest  furnace  of  his  soul. 
Its  Intensity,  and  Pictorial  power.  The  three  parts  make-up 
the  true  Unseen  World  of  the  Middle  Ages:  How  the  Christian 
Dante  felt  Good  and  Evil  to  be  the  two  polar  elements  of  this 
Creation.  Paganism  and  Christianism.  (125.)  —  Ten  silent  cen- 
turies found  a  voice  in  Dante.  The  thing  that  is  uttered  from 
the  inmost  parts  of  a  man's  soul  differs  altogether  from  what  is 
uttered  by  the  outer.  The  'uses 'of  Dante  :  We  will  not  estimate 
the  Sun  by  the  quantity  of  gas  it  saves  us.  Mahomet  and  Dante 
contrasted.  Let  a  man  do  his  work  ;  the  fruit  of  it  is  the  care  of 
Another  than  he.  (139.)  —  As  Dante  embodies  musicall}'  the  Inner 
Life  of  the  Middle  Ages,  so  does  Shakspeare  embody  the  Outer 
Life  which  grew  therefrom.  The  strange  outbudding  of  English 
Existence  which  we  call  '  Elizabethan  Era.'  Shakspeare  the  chief 
of  all  Poets:  His  calm,  all-seeing  Intellect:  His  marvellous  Por- 
trait-painting. (143.)  — The  Poet's  first  gift,  as  it  is  all  men's,  that 
he  have  intellect  enough,  — that  he  be  able  to  see.  Intellect  the 
summary  of  all  human  gifts:  Human  intellect  and  vulpine  in- 
tellect contrasted.  Siiakspeare's  instinctive  unconscious  great- 
ness :  His  works  a  part  of  Nature,  and  partaking  of  her  in- 
exhaustible depth.  Sliakspeare  greater  than  Dante ;  in  that  he 
not  only  sorrowed,  but  triumphed  over  his  sorrows.  His  mirth- 
fulness  and  genuine  overflowing  love  of  laughter.  His  Historical 
Plays,  a  kind  of  National  Epic.  The  Battle  of  Agincourt:  A 
noble  Patriotism,  far  otlier  than  the  '  indifference  '  sometimes 
ascribed  to  him.  His  works,  like  so  many  windows,  through  which 
we  see  glimpses  of  the  world  that  is  in  him.  (148.)  —  Dante  the 
melodious  Priest  of  Middle-Age  Catholicism:  Out  of  this 
Shakspeare  too  there  rises  a  kind  of  Universal  Psalm,  not  iinfit 
to  make  itself  heard  among  still  more  sacred  Psalms.  Shaks- 
peare an  'unconscious  Prophet;'  and  therein  greater  and  truer 


CARLYLE'S    SUMMARY  343 

than  Mahomet.  This  poor  Warwickshire  Peasant  worth  more  to 
lis  than  a  regiment  of  highest  Dignitaries  ;  Indian  Empire,  or 
Shakspeare,  —  which?  An  English  King,  whom  no  time  or 
chance  can  dethrone:  A  rallying-sign  and  bond  of  brotherhood 
for  all  Saxondom:  Wheresoever  English  men  and  women  are, 
they  will  say  to  one  another,  '  Yes,  this  Shakspeare  is  ours ! ' 
(156.) 

LECTURE  IV 

THE    HERO    AS    PRIEST.    LUTHER  ;    REFORMATION : 
KNOX  ;    PURITANISM 

The  Priest  a  kind  of  Prophet;  but  more  familiar,  as  the  daily 
enlightener  of  daily  life.  A  trne  Reformer  he  who  appeals  to 
Heaven's  invisible  justice  against  Earth's  visible  force.  The 
finished  Poet  often  a  symptom  that  his  epoch  itself  has  reached 
perfection,  and  finished.  Alas,  the  battling  Reformer,  too,  is  at 
times  a  needful  and  inevitable  phenomenon  :  Offences  do  accumu- 
late, till  they  become  insupportable.  Forms  of  Belief,  modes  of 
life  must  perish ;  yet  the  Good  of  the  Past  survives,  an  everlasting 
possession  for  us  all.  (p.  1G2.) — Idols,  or  visible  recognised 
Symbols,  common  to  all  Religions:  Hateful  only  when  insincere: 
The  property  of  every  Hero,  that  he  come  back  to  sincerity,  to 
reality:  Protestantism  and  'private  judgment.'  No  living  com- 
munion possible  among  men  who  believe  only  in  hearsays.  The 
Hero-Teacher,  who  delivers  men  out  of  darkness  into  light.  Not 
abolition  of  Hero-worship  does  Protestantism  mean;  but  rather 
a  whole  World  of  Heroes,  of  sincere,  believing  men.  (169.)  — 
Luther;  his  obscure,  seemingly-insignificant  birth.  His  youth 
schooled  in  adversity  and  stern  reality.  Becomes  a  Monk.  His 
religious  despair:  Discovers  a  Latin  Bible:  No  wonder  he  should 
venerate  the  Bible.  He  visits  Rome.  Meeti  the  Pope's  fire  by 
fire.  At  the  Diet  of  Worms:  The  greatest  moment  in  the 
modern  History  of  men.  (179.)  —  The  Wars  that  followed  are 
not  to  be  charged  to  the  Reformation.  The  Old  Religion  once 
true:  The  cry  of  'No  Popery'  foolish  enough  in  these  days. 
Protestantism  not  dead:  German  Literature  and  the  French  Rev- 
olution rather  considerable  signs  of  life  !  (190.)  —  How  Luther 
held  the  sovereignty  of  the  Reformation  and  kept  Peace  while 
he  lived.     His  written  Works:  Tiieir  rugged  homely  strength: 


344  CARLYLE'S    SUMMARY 

His  dialect  became  the  language  of  all  writing.  No  mortal  heart 
to  be  called  braver,  ever  lived  in  that  Teutonic  Kindred,  whose 
character  is  valour:  Yet  a  most  gentle  heart  withal,  full  of  pity 
and  love,  as  the  truly  valiant  heart  ever  is:  Traits  of  character 
from  his  Table-Talk  :  His  daughter's  Deathbed:  The  miraculous 
in  Nature.  His  love  of  Music.  His  Portrait.  (193.)  —  Puritan- 
ism the  only  phasis  of  Protestantism  that  ripened  into  a  living 
faith:  Defective  enough,  but  genuine.  Its  fruit  in  the  world. 
The  sailing  of  the  Mayflower  from  Delft  Haven  the  beginning  of 
American  Saxondom.  In  the  historj'  of  Scotland  properly  but 
one  epoch  of  world-interest, — the  Reformation  by  Knox:  A 
'  nation  of  heroes; '  a  believing  nation.  The  Puritanism  of  Scot- 
laud  became  that  of  England,  of  New  England.  (200.)  — Knox 
'  guilty  '  of  being  the  bravest  of  all  Scotchmen:  Did  not  seek  the 
post  of  Prophet.  At  the  siege  of  St.  Andrew's  Castle.  Emphat- 
ically a  sincere  man.  A  Galley-slave  on  the  River  Loire.  An 
Old-Hebrew  Prophet,  in  the  guise  of  an  Edinburgh  Minister  of 
the  Sixteenth  Century.  (205.)  —  Knox  and  Queen  Mary:  'Who 
are  you,  that  presume  to  school  tlie  nobles  and  sovereign  of  tliis 
realm?'  'Madam,  a  subject  born  within  the  same.'  His  intol- 
erance—  of  falsehoods  and  knaveries.  Not  a  mean  acrid  man; 
else  he  had  never  been  virtual  President  and  Sovereign  of  Scot- 
land. His  imexpected  vein  of  drollery:  A  cheery  social  man; 
practical,  cautious,  hopeful,  patient.  His  '  devout  imagination  '  of 
a  Theocracy,  or  Government  of  God.  Hildebrand  wished  a  Tlieo- 
cracy;  Cromwell  wished  it,  fought  for  it:  Mahomet  attained  it. 
In  one  form  or  other,  it  is  the  one  thing  to  be  struggled  for.  (209.) 


LECTURE  V 

THE    HERO    AS    MAN    OF    LETTERS.     JOHNSON,    ROUSSEAU, 
BURNS 

The  Hero  as  Man  of  Letters  altogether  a  product  of  these 
new  ages:  A  Heroic  Soul  in  very  strange  guise.  Literary  Men; 
genuine  and  spurious.  Fichte's  'Divine  Idea  of  the  World:' 
His  notion  of  the  True  Man  of  Letters.  Goethe,  the  Pattern 
Literary  Hero.  (p.  215.)  —  The  disorganised  condition  of  Liter- 
ature, the  summary  of  all  other  modern  disorganisations.  The 
Writer  of  a  true  Book  our  true  modern  Preacher.   Miraculous 


CARLYLE'S    SUMMARY  345 

influence  of  Books  :  The  Hebrew  Bible.  Books  are  now  our 
actual  University,  our  Church,  our  Parliament.  With  Books, 
Democracy  is  inevitable.  Thought  the  true  thaumaturgic  influ- 
ence, by  which  man  works  all  things  whatsoever.  (221.)  —  Or- 
ganisation of  the  '  Literary  Guild: '  Needful  discipline;  '  priceless 
lessons  '  of  Poverty.  The  Literary  Priesthood,  and  its  importance 
to  society.  Chinese  Literary  Governors.  Fallen  into  strange 
times;  and  strange  things  need  to  be  speculated  upon.  (230.)  — 
An  age  of  Scepticism:  The  very  possibility  of  Heroism  formally 
abnegated.  Benthamism  an  eyeless  Heroism.  Scepticism,  Spirit- 
ual Paralysis,  Insincerity :  Heroes  gone-out ;  Quacks  come-in. 
Our  brave  Chatham  himself  lived  the  strangest  mimetic  life  all 
along.  Violent  remedial  revulsions:  Chartisms,  French  Revo- 
lutions :  The  Age  of  Scepticism  passing  away.  Let  each  Man 
look  to  the  mending  of  his  own  Life.  (236.) —Johnson  one  of 
our  Great  English  Souls.  His  miserable  Youth  and  Hypochon- 
dria: Stubborn  Self-help.  His  loyal  submission  to  what  is  really 
higher  than  himself.  How  he  stood  by  the  old  Formulas  :  Not 
less  original  for  that.  Formulas;  their  Use  and  Abuse.  John- 
son's unconscious  sincerity.  His  Twofold  Gospel,  a  kind  of  Moral 
Prudence  and  clear  Hatred  of  Cant.  His  writings  sincere  and 
full  of  substance.  Architectural  nobleness  of  his  Dictionary. 
Boswell,  with  all  his  faults,  a  true  hero-worshipper  of  a  true 
Hero.  (246.)  —  Rousseau  a  morbid,  excitable,  spasmodic  man  ; 
intense  rather  than  strong.  Had  not  the  invaluable  •  talent  of 
Silence.'  His  Face,  expressive  of  his  character.  His  Egoism : 
Hungry  for  the  praises  of  men.  His  books :  Passionate  appeals, 
which  did  once  more  struggle  towards  Reality:  A  Prophet  to  his 
Time;  as  he  could,  and  as  the  Time  could.  Rosepink,  and  arti- 
ficial bedizenment.  Fretted,  exasperated,  till  the  heart  of  him 
went  mad:  He  could  be  cooped,  starving,  into  garrets  ;  laughed 
at  as  a  maniac ;  but  he  could  not  be  hindered  from  setting  the 
world  on  fire.  (256.)  —  Burns  a  genuine  Hero,  in  a  withered, 
unbelieving,  secondhand  Century.  The  largest  soul  of  all  the 
British  lands,  came  among  us  in  the  shape  of  a  hard-handed 
Scottish  Peasant.  His  heroic  Father  and  Mother,  and  their 
sore  struggle  through  life.  His  rough  untutored  dialect :  Affec- 
tionate joyousness.  His  writings  a  poor  fragment  of  him.  His 
conversational  gifts  :  High  duchesses  and  low  ostlers  alike  fas- 
cinated by  him.   (261.)  —  Resemblance  between  Burns  and  Mira* 


346  CARLYLE'S    SUMMARY 

beau.  Official  Superiors  :  The  greatest  '  thinking  faculty  '  in 
this  land  superciliously  dispensed  with.  Hero-woiship  under 
strange  conditions.  The  notablest  phasis  of  Burus's  history  his 
visit  to  Edinburgh.  For  one  man  who  can  stand  prosperity,  there 
are  a  hundred  that  will  stand  adversity.  Literary  Lionisui. 
(265.) 

LECTURE  VI 

THE  HERO  AS   KING.    CROMWELL,  NAPOLEON  :   MODERN 
REVOLUTIONISM 

The  King  the  most  important  of  Great  Men  ;  the  summary  of 
all  the  various  figures  of  Heroism.  To  enthrone  the  Ablest  Man, 
the  true  business  of  all  Social  procedure  :  The  Ideal  of  Con- 
stitutions. Tolerable  and  intolerable  approximations.  Divine 
Rights  and  Diabolic  Wrongs,  (p.  272.)  — The  world's  sad  pre- 
dicament ;  that  of  having  its  Able-Man  to  seek,  and  not  knowing 
in  what  manner  to  proceed  about  it.  The  era  of  Modern  Revolu- 
tionism dates  from  Luther.  The  French  Revolution  no  mere 
act  of  General  Insanity  :  Truth  clad  in  hell-fire  ;  the  Trump  of 
Doom  to  Plausibilities  and  empty  Routine.  The  cry  of  '  Liberty 
and  Equality  '  at  bottom  the  repudiation  of  sham  Heroes.  Hero- 
worship  exists  forever  and  everywhere:  from  divine  adoration 
down  to  the  common  courtesies  of  man  and  man :  The  soul  of 
Order,  to  which  all  things.  Revolutions  included,  work.  Some 
Cromwell  or  Napoleon  the  necessary  finish  of  a  Sansculottism. 
The  manner  in  which  Kings  were  made,  and  Kingship  itself  first 
took  rise.  (277.)  —  Puritanism  a  section  of  the  universal  war  of 
Belief  against  Make-believe.  Laud  a  weak  ill-starred  Pedant; 
in  his  spasmodic  vehemence  heeding  no  voice  of  prudence,  no 
cry  of  pity.  Universal  necessity  for  true  Forms:  How  to  distin- 
guish between  True  and  False.  The  nakedest  Reality  preferable 
to  any  empty  Sembkmce,  however  dignified.  (283.)  — The  work 
of  the  Puritans.  The  Sceptical  Eighteenth  century,  and  its  con- 
stitutional estimate  of  Cromwell  and  his  associates.  No  wish  to 
disparage  such  characters  as  Hampden,  Eliot,  Pym  ;  a  most  con- 
stitutional, unblamable,  dignified  set  of  men.  The  rugged  outcast 
Cromwell,  the  man  of  them  all  in  whom  one  still  finds  human 
stuff.  The  One  thing  worth  revolting  for.  (287.)  —  Cromwell's 
•  hypocrisy,'  an  impossible  theory.    His  pious  Life  as  a  Farmer 


CARLYLE'S   SUMMARY  347 

until  forty  years  of  age.  His  public  successes  honest  successes 
of  a  brave  niau.  His  participation  in  the  King's  death  no  ground 
of  condemnation.  His  eye  for  facts  no  hypocrite's  gift.  His  Iron- 
sides the  embodiment  of  this  insight  of  his.  (293.)  — Know  the 
men  that  may  be  trusted:  Alas,  tliis  is  yet,  in  these  days,  very  far 
from  us.  Cromwell's  hypochondria  :  His  reputed  confusion  of 
speech :  His  habit  of  prayer.  His  speeches  unpremeditated  and 
full  of  meaning.  His  reticences)  called  '  lying '  and '  dissimulation: ' 
Not  one  falsehood  proved  against  him.  (300.)  —  Foolish  charge 
of  'ambition.'  The  great  Empire  of  Silence:  Noble  silent  men, 
scattered  here  and  there,  each  in  his  department ;  silently  think- 
ing, silently  hoping,  silently  working.  Two  kinds  of  ambition ;  one 
wholly  blamable,  the  other  laudable,  inevitable  :  How  it  actually 
was  with  Cromwell.  (306.)  —  Hume's  Fanatic-Hypocrite  theory. 
How  indispensable  everywhere  a  King  is,  in  all  movements  of 
men.  Cromwell,  as  King  of  Puritanism,  of  England.  Constitu- 
tional palaver :  Dismissal  of  the  Rump  Parliament.  Cromwell's 
Parliaments  and  Protectorship :  Parliaments  having  failed, 
there  remained  nothing  for  him  but  the  way  of  Despotism.  His 
closing  days :  His  poor  old  Mother.  It  was  not  to  men's  judg- 
ments that  he  appealed ;  nor  have  men  judged  him  very  well. 
(315.)  — The  French  Revolution,  the  'third  act '  of  Protestant- 
ism. Napoleon,  infected  with  the  quackeries  of  his  age  :  Had  a 
kind  of  sincerity,  —  an  instinct  towards  the  prarfjcaL  His  faith, 
—  'the  Tools  to  him  that  can  handle  them,'  —  the  whole  truth  of 
Democracy.  His  heart-hatred  of  Anarchy.  Finally,  his  quack- 
eries got  the  upper  hand:  He  would  found  a 'Dynasty:'  Be- 
lieved wholly  in  the  dupeability  of  Men.  This  Napoleonism 
was  unjust,  a  falsehood,  and  could  not  last.    (328.) 


ADDITIONAL   NOTES,  COMMENTS,  AND 
SUGGESTIONS   FOR  STUDY 

LECTURE  I 

Heroes,  Hero-Tvorship:  to  understand  fully  what  C.  means 
by  these  words  is  an  important  part  of  the  student's  husiness 
with  the  book.  The  simplest  definition  is  given  in  the  first 
sentence.  In  reading,  make  notes  of  all  the  passages  in  the 
book  which  contribute  material  toward  a  final  full  definition. 
The  subject  may  have  been  suggested  to  C.  by  a  passage  in 
Hume,  of  whose  works  C.  was  a  close  student  :  —  "  The  same 
principles  naturally  deify  mortals  superior  in  power,  cour- 
age, or  understanding,  and  produce  hero-worship."  Uni- 
versal History:  other  points  of  view  for  the  study  of  his- 
tory ?  their  merits  or  shortcomings  ? 
Page  3 

Note  the  positive  definition  of  religion;  emphasize  "practi- 
cally "  and  "  mysterious." 

Page  6  „  .     ,    ^ 

The  comment  on  the  truth  of  "  Grand  Laraaism  is  the  first 
of  many  passages  in  the  book  which,  taken  together,  set  forth 
C.'s  theory  of  government. 

Page  10  , 

Not  only  to  understand,  but  to  feel  and  "practically  lay  to 
heart  "  the  meaning  of  this  page  and  the  next  two  is  to  be 
in  sympathy  with  C.  in  one  of  his  most  characteristic  and 
fundamental  teachings  about  life.  Compare  pp.  217,  218, 
and  add.  note.  Read  in  this  connection  his  "stupendous  Sec- 
tion" on  "Natural  Supernaturalism,"  S.  R.^  Ill,  viii;  see 
also  I,  viii. 

Page  11 

'  There  .  .  .  rot  ?  '  C.  often,  as  here,  quotes  or  adapts 
from  his  own  writings:  "The  withered  leaf  is  not  dead 
and  lost;  there  are  Forces  in  it  and  around  it,  though  work- 
ino"  in  inverse  order  ;  else  how  could  it  rot  ?  "  S.  R.  I,  xi. 
if  such  .  .  .  possible  :  full  meaning  of  this  clause  ? 

Page  13 

With  the  first  paragraph  compare  Tennyson's  The  Higher 
Pantheism,  beginning:  — 

I  Sartor  Resartus. 


350  ADDITIONAL  NOTES 

"The  sun,  the  moon,  the  stars,  the  seas,  the  hills  iiiid  the  plains, — 
Are  not  these,  O  Soul,  the  Vision  of  Uiin  who  leigus?  " 

And  also  his 

"  Flower  in  the  crannied  wall, 
I  pluck  you  out  of  the  crannies, 
Hold  you  liere,  root  and  all,  in  my  hand. 
Little  (lower —  but  if  I  could  understand 
What  yuu  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is." 

'a  ■windo'w  .  .  .  itself :""  Rightly  viewed  no  meanest 
ohject  is  insignificiint ;  all  ohjects  lue  as  windows,  throufjh 
which  the  philosopliic  eye  looks  into  Iiitinitiide  itself."  S.  R. 
I,  xi.  The  mystery.  .  .  "I  ":"  Tliere  come  seasons,  medi- 
tative, sweet,  yet  awful  hours,  when  in  wonder  and  fear  you 
ask  yourself  that  unanswerable  question:  Who  am  /y  the 
thing  that  can  say  "  I  "  .  .  .  the  sigiit  reaches  forth  into 
the  void  Deep,  and  you  are  alone  with  the  Universe,  and 
silently  commune  with  it  as  one  mysterious  Presence  with 
another  .  .  .  Sure  enough,  I  am;  and  lately  was  not:  but 
Whence?  How?  Whereto?  The  answer  lies  around,  written 
in  all  colours  and  motions,  uttered  in  all  tones  of  jubilee  and 
wail,  in  thousand-figured,  thousand-voiced,  harmonious  Na- 
ture :  but  where  is  the  cunning  eye  and  ear  to  whom  that 
God-written  Apocalypse  will  yield  articulate  meaning  ?  " 
^'.  R.  I,  viii. 

Page  15 

deepest  root :  not  "  earliest."  greatest  of  all  Heroes : 
note  C.'s  expression  of  reverence  here  and  elsewhere. 
Compare  "  Look  on  our  divinest  Symbol:  on  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth, and  his  Life,  and  his  Biography,  and  what  followed 
therefrom.  Higher  has  the  human  thought  not  yet  reached: 
.  .  .  whose  significance  will  ever  demand  to  be  anew  in- 
quired into,  and  anew  made  manifest.".  S.  R.  Ill,  iii. 

Page  16 

Society  .  .  .  Worship  of  Heroes :  state  fully  to  your- 
self, with  concrete  illustration,  the  meaning  of  this  sentence. 
The  thought  recurs  constantly  in  the  following  pages. 

Page  21 

In  that  strange  island :  a  striking  example  of  C.'s  vivid 
word-painting.  To  feel  by  contrast  tlie  peculiar  quality  of 
Carlyle,  read  the  finely  detailed  descriptions  in  Tennyson's 
Lancelot  and  Elaine.  For  other  exaniplesof  C.'s  descriptive 
work  see  near  the  beginnings  of  chaps,  vi  and  ix  of  S.  R.  II. 

Page  24 

split  in  the  glance :  what  phenomenon  does  this  really 
have  reference  to  ? 

Page  25 

Wish:  take  note  of  the  rest  of  this  pnragraph.  C.  recurs 
to  the  thought  frequently.  Higher  considerations :  the 
doctrine  of  "The  Everlasting  Yea"  in  S.  R.  II,  ix. 


ADDITIONAL  NOTES  351 

Page  29  ^  ^  ,.^       . 

What  he  says  :  the  thought  of  pp.  17,  18  from  a  difierent 
point  of  view. 

Page  31 

Councils  .  .  .  Dantes,  Luthers  :  this  pluralizing  of  proper 
names  is  a  favorite  device  with  C.  for  achieving  greater  vi- 
vidness and  concreteuess  of  expression. 

Page  34 

How  the  man:  the  paragraph  is  worth  dwelling  upon, 
both  for  its  thought  and  for  its  style  with  the  fine  burst  of 
poetical  enthusiasm  at  the  end. 

Page  37 

The  world  .  .  .  '  Image  of  his  own  Dream : '  consider, 
for  concrete  example,  how  different  an  impression  of  any- 
common  object  one  gets  through  a  microscope  from  that 
which  he  receives  from  looking  with  his  unaided  eye ;  or 
how  different  would  be  the  impressions  of  an  autumn  land- 
scape seen  by  an  artist  and  by  a  color-blind  man  at  the  same 
moment :  and  then  consider  how  little  we  can  know  of  what 
the  world  really  is,  as  compared  with  the  knowledge  possi- 
ble to  a  being  of  infinitely  powerful  and  infinitely  delicate 
senses.  Compare  S.  R.  I,  viii :  "  So  that  this  so  solid-seem- 
ly ing  world,  after  all,  were  but  an  air-image,  our  Me  the  only 
reality:  and  Nature,  with  its  thousandfold  production  and 
destruction,  but  the  reflex  of  our  own  inward  Force,  the 
« phantasy  of  our  Dream  ; '  or  what,  the  Earth-Spirit  in 
Faust  names  it,  the  living  visible  Garment  of  God."  See,  also, 
below,  add.  note  to  p.  217,  "Transcendental  philosophy." 

Page  44 

true  to  this  hour:  compare  pp.  41  and  57. 

Page  45 

No  Homer  :  compare  Horace,  Odes  IV,  ix,  "  Many  mighty 
men  lived  before  Agamemnon;  but  they  all  are  overwhelmed 
in  the  long  night,  unwept  and  unknown,  for  want  of  a  sacred 
bard." 

Page  47 

Gray's  fragments :  Prof.  Kittredge  (Phelps's  Selections 
from  Gray  [Giun  &  Co.],  xli-1)  points  out  tliat  Gray's  en- 
thusiasm for  Scandinavian  study  was  not  accompanied  with 
any  real  scholarly  knowledge  of  the  original  sources.  A  few 
stanzas  from  The  Fatal  Sisters  follow  (the  Valkyrs  sing) :  — 
«'  Glitt'ring  lances  are  the  loom,  "  Ere  the  niddy  sun  be  set, 

Where  the  dusky  warp  we  strain,  Pikes  must  shiver,  javelins  sing, 

Weaving  many  a  Soldier's  doom.  Blade  with  clattering  buckler  meet, 

Orkney's  woe,  and  Randver's  bane.        Hauberk  crash,  and  helmet  ring. 

"  See  the  griesly  texture  grow, 
('T  is  of  human  entrails  made,)  "  Sisters,  hence  with  spurs  of  speed  : 
And  the  weights,  that  play  below.  Each  her  thundering  f  aulchion  wield ; 
Each  a  gasping  Warriour's  head.            Each  bestride  her  sable  steed. 
Hurry,  hurry  to  the  field." 


352  ADDITIONAL  NOTES 

Pope  .  .  .  Homer:  see  Matthew  Arnold's  On  Translating 
Homer. 

Page  49 

Thor  .  .  .  Thialfi :  compare  King  Lear,  II,  iv,  68,  69, 
"  We  'II  set  thee  to  school  to  an  ant,  to  teach  thee  there  's 
no  laboring  i'  the  winter." 

Page  50 

Hamlet :  see  notes  on  sources  of  the  plot  in  any  good  edi- 
tion of  Hamlet. 

Page  51 

this  •world  .  .  .  but  a  shew:  compare  p.  37. 

Page  54 

la'VB' of  mutation:  compare  the  expression  of  this  thought 
in  the  "Messianic  Prophecies"  of  the  Old  Testament,  in  the 
description  of  the  Judgment  in  Matt,  xxv;  in  1  Cor.  xv; 
and  in  the  last  book  of  the  New  Testament. 

Page  55 

the  last  my  thus  of  .  .  .  Thor:  note  how  fittingly  this 
story  closes  C.'s  appeal  for  the  recognition  and  appreciation 
of  the  best  elements  of  "  old  Norse  thought."  See  above, 
note  to  p.  44. 

The  day  after  this  lecture  was  delivered  C.  wrote  to  his 
mother  :  *'  First  lecture  over.  I  thought  I  should  get  some-^ 
thing  like  the  tenth  part  of  my  meaning  unfolded  to  the 
good  people,  and  I  could  not  feel  that  I  had  got  much  more. 
However,  they  seemed  content;  sate  silent,  listening  as  if  it 
had  been  gospel.  I  strive  not  to  heed  my  own  notion  of  tlie 
thing,  to  keep  down  the  conceit  and  ambition  of  me,  for  that  is 
it.   I  was  not  in  good  tune,    I  had  awoke  at  4^." 

LECTURE  II 

Page  59 

For  at  bottom  .  .  .  one  stufif:  a  fundamental  principle 
of  C.'s  Hero-doctrine ;  amplified  statement  of  it  on  pp.  108, 
109;  also  on  p.  162. 

Page  60 

hundred-and-eighty  millions  :  now  increased  by  upwards 
of  thirteen-and-a-half  millions  more.  (^Encycl.  of  Missions.) 

Page  62 

sincerity  .  .  .  the  first  characteristic :  this  being  C.'s 
"  primary  definition  of  a  Great  Man,"  it  is  of  the  utmost 
importance  to  note  carefully  all  the  passages  that  throw  light 
on  what  Carlyle  means  by  "  sincerity."  See  the  very  im- 
portant comments  on  this  point  on  p.  217. 

Page  63 

'inspiration  .  .  .  understanding:'  Jobxxxii,  8:  But  there 
is  a  spirit  in  man:  and  the  inspiration,  etc.    Other  Bible 


ADDITIONAL  NOTES  353 

verses  laid  under  tribute  by  C.  in  the  remaining  pages  of  this 
one  lecture  are  given  all  together  here  (notice,  in  reading, 
the  places  where  they  appear)  by  way  of  emphasizing  an  im- 
portant characteristic  of  C.'s  style,  resulting  from  his  home 
training :  Acts  xiii,  22 :  I  have  found  David  the  son  of 
Jesse,  a  man  after  mine  own  heart,  which  shall  fulfil  all  my 
will.  Jer.  X,  23:  O  Lord,  I  know  that  the  way  of  man  is 
not  in  himself :  it  is  not  in  man  that  walketh  to  direct  his 
steps.  Job  xxxix,  19  :  Hast  thou  given  the  horse  strength  ? 
hast  thou  clothed  his  neck  with  thunder  ?  xli,  29 :  Darts 
are  counted  as  stubble :  he  langheth  at  the  shaking  of  a 
spear.  (  Said  of  the  leviathan,  not  the  horse  as  C.  remembers 
it.)  1  Kings  xix,  11,  12  :  And  a  great  and  strong  wind  rent 
the  mountains  .  .  .  but  the  Lord  was  not  in  the  wind :  and 
after  the  wind  an  earthquake  ;  but  the  Lord  was  not  in  the 
earthquake :  And  after  the  earthquake  a  fire ;  but  the  Lord  was 
not  in  the  fire :  and  after  the  fire  a  still  small  voice.  Gal.  i, 
15,  16 :  But  when  it  pleased  God  ...  To  reveal  his  Son  in 
me  .  .  .  immediately  I  conferred  not  with  flesh  and  blood. 
Job  xiii,  15:  Though  he  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust  in  him. 
Job  i,  20,  21:  Then  Job  arose,  and  rent  his  mantle.  .  .  .  And 
said.  Naked  came  I  out  of  my  mother's  womb,  and  naked 
shall  I  return  thither :  the  Lord  gave,  and  the  Lord  hath 
taken  away;  blessed  be  the  name  of  the  Lord.  See  also 
p.  68,  n.  3. 

Page  70 

most  important  Event :  compare  above,  note  to  p.  15. 

Page  76 

A  Hero  .  .  .  looks  through  the  shows  of  things : 
another  definition  of  the  sincere  man. 

Page  77 

transitory  garment:  try  to  state  just  what  C.  means  by 
this. 

Page  78 

highest  ■wisdom  ...  to  submit  to  Necessity :  com- 
pare this  with  C.'s  comment  on  the  Norse  "  Destiny  inex- 
orable "  (pp.  43,  44),  and  note  its  bearing  on  the  idea  of  the 
god  Wish  (p.  25). 

Page  84 

first  get  your  sword:  meaning? 

Page  85 

Nature  .  .  .  umpire  .  .  .  can  do  no  wrong :  this  doc- 
trine, that  in  the  long  run  might  and  right  are  the  same, 
has  been  a  rock  of  offense  to  many  readers;  the  abuses  of  the 
principle  are  of  course  obvious.  The  idea  reappears  con- 
stantly in  Heroes  and  in  C.'s  other  books;  it  is  worth  while 
to  stop  and  consider  just  exactly  what  he  means  by  it. 


354  ADDITIONAL  NOTES 

Page  95 

material  ■world  .  .  .  Nothing :  compare  p.  51,  and  add. 
note  to  p.  217. 

Page  97 

Not  happiness:  "  There  is  in  man  a  Higher  than  Love  of 
Happiness:  he  can  do  without  Happiness  and  instead  thereof 
find  Blessedness.  .  .  .  Love  not  Pleasure;  love  God;  This 
is  the  Everlasting  Yea."  S.  R.  II,  ix. 

Page  98 

last  -words:  Muir  {Life of  M.')  describes  the  scene:  "  'Lord, 
grant  me  pardon  ;  and  join  me  to  the  companionship  on 
high.'  Then  at  intervals  :  '  Eternity  in  Paradise  ! '  '  Pardon  ! ' 
*  The  blessed  companionship  on  high  !  '  He  stretched  him- 
self gently.  Then  all  was  still.  His  head  grew  heavy  on 
the  bosom  of  Ayesha.  The  prophet  of  Arabia  was  no 
more." 

Page  103 

the  Infinite  Nature  of  Duty:  compare  S.  R.  II,  vii  : 
"  Thus,  in  spite  of  all  Motive-grinders,  and  Mechanical  Pro- 
fit-and-Loss  Philosophies  with  the  sick  ophthalmia  and  hal- 
lucination they  had  brought  on,  was  the  Infinite  nature  of 
Duty  still  dimly  present  to  me." 

Pages  103,  104 

What  is  the  chief  end  .  .  .  not  Mahomet:  there  were 
few,  if  any,  things  under  the  sun  for  which  C.  entertained 
so  energetic  a  hatred  as  for  the  utilitarian  "  Profit-and-Loss  " 
philosophy.  He  had  already  delivered  himself  on  this  sub- 
ject in  S.  R.  Ill,  iii  :  "  Man  is  by  birth  somewhat  of  an  owl. 
Perhaps,  too,  of  all  the  owleries  that  ever  possessed  him,  the 
most  owlish,  if  we  consider  it,  is  that  of  your  actually  exist- 
ing Motive-Millwrights  ...  to  fancy  himself  a  dead  Iron- 
Balance  for  weighing  Pains  and  Pleasures  on,  was  reserved 
for  this  his  latter  era.  There  stands  he,  his  Universe  one 
huge  Manger,  filled  with  hay  and  thistles  to  be  weighed 
against  each  other ;  and  looks  long-eared  enough.  .  .  .  And 
now  the  genius  of  Mechanism  smothers  him  worse  than  any 
nightmare  did  ;  till  the  Soul  is  nigh  choked  out  of  him,  and 
only  a  kind  of  Digestive,  Mechanic  life  remains." 

"  Perhaps  the  most  energetic  expression  of  his  ideal  of 
disinterested  duty  is  the  onslaught  on  Benthamism  in  '  Hero 
Worship,'  which,  as  Carlyle  pi-onounced  the  word  '  beggar- 
lier,'  brought  Mill  to  his  feet  with  an  empiiatic  No  !  "  — 
Richard  Garnett's  Thomas  Carlyle,  p.  171.  See  also  earlier 
in  the  present  lecture,  p.  78,  and  later,  pp.  239,  240. 

The  day  after  tlie  lecture  Carlyle  wrote  to  his  mother : 
"  I  gave  them  to  know  that  the  poor  Arab  had  points  about 
him  which  it  were  good  for  all  of  them  to  imitate;   that 


ADDITIONAL  NOTES  355 

probably  they  were  more  of  quacks  than  he ;  that,  in  short, 
it  was  altogether  a  new  kind  of  thing  they  were  hearing 
to-day." 

LECTURE   III 

Vage  109 

there  are  aptitudes :  note  the  qualification  of  the  state- 
ment of  the  previous  paragraph,  "  that  the  Hero  can  be 
Poet,"  etc. 

Page  110 

all  Appearance  .  .  .  the  vesture:  the  various  brief  ex- 
positious  of  C.'s  transcendental  philosophy  scattered  through 
Heroes  are  worth  careful  attention. 

Page  112 

"We  are  all  poets :  compare  C.'s  Essay  on  Burns  (R.  L.  S. 
No.  105),  pp.  28,  29  :  "  The  feelings,  the  gifts  that  exist  in 
the  Poet,  are  those  that  exist,  with  more  or  less  development, 
in  every  human  soul:  the  imagination  which  shudders  at  the 
Hell  of  Dante,  is  the  same  faculty,  weaker  in  degree,  which 
called  that  picture  into  being.  How  does  the  Poet  speak  to 
men,  with  power,  but  by  being  still  more  a  man  than  they?" 

Page  115 

notions  of  God  .  .  .  higher:  "An  honest  God's  the  no- 
blest work  of  man,"  says  the  parodist. 

Page  117 

Portrait :  this  description  and  that  of  the  portrait  of  Luther 
are  striking  examples  of  C.'s  graphic  power.  They  are  also 
characteristic  of  his  love  of  the  concrete  as  an  aid  to  making 
real  his  ideas.  He  had  a  screen  in  his  library  on  which  he 
posted  portraits  of  the  various  heroes,  ancient  and  modern, 
that  he  could  get  pictures  of.  Holman  Hunt  reports  an  in- 
teresting conversation  in  which,  in  the  course  of  very  unfav- 
orable comment  on  Hunt's  picture,  The  Light  of  the  World, 
Carlyle  told  him  :  "  I  am  only  a  poor  man,  but  I  can  say  in 
serious  truth  that  I  'd  thankfully  give  one  third  of  all  the 
little  store  of  money  saved  for  my  wife  and  old  age,  for  a 
veritable  contemporary  representation  of  Jesus  Christ,  show- 
ing Him  as  He  walked  about,  wliile  he  was  trying  with  his 
ever  invincible  soul  to  break  down  the  obtuse  stupidity  of 
the  cormorant-minded,  bloated  gang  who  were  doing,  in  des- 
perate contention,  their  utmost  to  make  the  world  go  devil- 
ward  with  themselves."  Pre-Raphaelitism  and  the  Pre-Raph- 
aelite Brotherhood,  I,  355  £f.  The  portrait  of  Dante,  repro- 
duced in  the  present  volume  opposite  p.  118,  was  discovered 
July  21,  1840,  more  than  two  months  after  the  delivery  of 
this  lecture,  on  a  wall  in  the  Palace  of  the  Podestk  in  Flor- 


356  ADDITIONAL  NOTES 

ence.  It  had  been  covered  over  with  plaster  for  about  two 
centuries  and  was  almost  lost  even  to  memory.  The  story 
of  its  discovery  is  told  by  Professor  Norton  in  a  Note  on 
the  Portraits  of  Dante  (reprinted  in  Dinsmore's  Aids  to  the 
Study  of  Dante,  pp.  149-154).  In  spite  of  the  denials  of 
some  critics  it  seems  practically  certain  that  this  is  the 
portrait  by  Giotto,  tradition  of  which  had  long  existed.  It 
represents,  of  course,  the  young  Dante  of  the  Vita  Nuova, 
not  the  stern  exile  described  by  Carlyle.  In  the  course  of 
the  Note  above-mentioned  Professor  Norton  describes  the 
Dante  death-mask:  "The  face  is  one  of  the  most  pathetic 
upon  which  human  eyes  ever  looked.  .  .  .  Strength  is  the 
most  striking  attribute  of  the  countenance.  .  .  .  The  look 
is  grave  and  stern  almost  to  grimness  ;  there  is  a  scornful 
lift  of  the  eyebrow,  and  a  contraction  of  the  forehead  as 
from  painful  thought  ;  but  obscured  under  this  look,  yet  not 
lost,  are  the  marks  of  tenderness,  refinement  and  self-mas- 
tery, which  in  combination  with  the  more  obvious  character- 
istics, give  to  the  countenance  of  the  dead  poet  an  ineffable 
dignity  and  melancholy."  Two  views  of  the  death-mask  are 
given  by  Dinsmore,  pp.  156,  158.  See  also  Lowell's  On  a 
Portrait  of  Dante,  i)y  Giotto. 

Page  124 

made  me  lean :  why,  then,  did  he  write  it?  See  p.  311,  last 
half. 

Page  126 

terza  rima :  "  I,  the  writer,  heard  Dante  say  that  never  a 
rhyme  had  led  him  to  say  other  than  he  would,  but  that 
many  a  time  and  oft  he  had  made  words  say  in  his  rhymes 
what  they  were  not  wont  to  express  for  other  poets."  L'  at- 
timo  Commento,  Longfellow's  Inferno  :  Illustrations. 

Page  127 

people  of  Verona :  see  Dante  at  Verona,  in  Collected  Works 
of  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti,  I.  (London,  1897.)  He  narrates 
also  the  "  like  to  like  "  story. 

Page  133 

so  Dante  discerned:  so  also  did  Shakespeare,  and  ex- 
pressed it  supremely  in  King  Lear. 

Page  138 

incompatibility  absolute  and  infinite :  compare  p.  103. 

Page  140 

the  one  sole  secret :  compare  p.  90. 

Page  142 

empire  of  Silence:  meaning? 

Page  146 

best  judgment  ...  of  Europe  :  "The  first  page  of  Shake- 
speare that  I  read,"  said  Goethe,  "  made  me  his  for  life ; 


*  ADDITIONAL  NOTES  357 

and  when  I  had  finished  a  single  play  I  stood  like  one  born 
blind,  on  whom'a  miraculous  hand  bestows  sight  in  a  mo- 
ment." 
Page  151 

without  morality  ...  could  not  know  anything  at 
all :  it  is  of  tbe  first  importance  to  understand  the  sense  in 
which  C.  uses  the  words  morality  and  intellect.  The  former 
does  not  mean  perfection,  freedom  from  defect.  "  What  we 
call  pure  or  impure,  is  not  witb  [Nature]  the  final  question. 
Not  bow  much  cbafF  is  in  you  ;  but  whether  you  have  any 
wheat."  See  the  whole  paragraph  :  "  On  the  whole,  we  make 
too  much  of  faults,"  p.  64 ;  and  "  We  will  not  assert  that 
Cromwell  was  an  immaculate  man,"  p.  316.  Note  too  that 
intellect  does  not  mean  cleverness,  knack,  or  skill  in  doing 

—  even  conspicuously  well  —  anything.  "  The  seeing  eye  ! 
It  is  this  that  discloses  the  inner  harmony  of  things  ;  what 
Nature  meant  .  .  ."  By  way  of  illustration  of  the  sentence 
under  discussion,  try  to  enumerate  the  moral  qualities  which 
the  scholar,  the  scientist,  tbe  explorer,  must  possess  that  he 
may  come  to  know  anything  worth  telling  to  the  world. 

Page  153 

Sonnets  :  "  With  this  key  Sbakspeare  unlocked  his  heart." 

—  Wordsworth.  "The  less  Sbakspeare  he."  —  Browning. 
For  the  autobiographical  significance  of  the  Sonnets  see 
Sidney  Lee,  A  Life  of  William  Shakespeare,  chaps,  vii,  viii, 
and  X.  sat  like  a  bird  on  the  bough ;  and  sang  forth : 
see  Milton,  On  Shakspeare :  — 

"  For  whilst,  to  the  shame  of  slow-endeavouring  Art, 
Thy  easy  numbers  flow," 

and  U Allegro :  — 

"  Or  sweetest  Shakspeare,  Fancy's  child, 
Warble  his  native  wood  notes  wild." 

Page  156 

No  man  works  save  under  conditions :  suggest  pas- 
sages or  characteristics  of  tbe  plays  that  give  evidence  of 
the  truth  of  this  statement  as  applied  to  Shakespeare. 

Page  161 

he  cannot  yet  speak :  modern  Russian  literature  was  just 
getting  on  its  feet  as  Carlyle  was  establishing  himself  in 
London.  The  first  of  tbe  modern  poets,  Pushkin,  died  in 
1838,  at  tbe  age  of  thirty-nine  (see  translations  by  N.  H. 
Dole  mPoet  Lore,  1889-1891);  and  Lermontov,  his  greatest 
successor,  died  in  1841,  at  the  age  of  twenty-seven.  Such 
work  as  that  of  Tolstoi,  Turgenev,  and  "  K.  R."  suggests 
that  it  is  hardly  appropriate  any  longer  to  call  Russia  "  a 
great  dumb  monster." 


358  ADDITIONAL  NOTES  ' 

LECTURE  IV 

Page  166 

as  handled :  note  the  modif  ving  phrase,  aud  "  the  fact  it- 
self seems  certain  enough."  See  C.'s  handling  of  the  idea  ia 
S.  R.  Ill,  vii  ("  Organic  Filaments  "). 

Page  168 

Tvhat  a  melancholy  notion:  compare  pp.  41,  44,  and  57. 

Page  172 

Sincere-Cant:  just  the  meaning?  It  is  the  property  of 
every  Hero  :  another  definition  of  sincerity. 

Page  174 

Dante  had  not  put-out  his  eyes :  Dante's  "  Liberty  of 
private  judgment"  enabled. him  to  place  several  popes  in 
Hell,  and  to  predict  the  arrival  there  later  of  the  one  then 
reigning. 

Page  178 

If  Hero  mean :  the  closing  sentences  of  this  paragraph 
comprise  a  summary  of  the  ethical  appeal  of  the  book- 

Page  i91 

The  cry  of  '  No  Popery : '  provoked  by  the  Oxford,  or 
Tractarian,  Movement,  also  called  the  Anglo-Catholic  Re- 
vival, then  at  its  height,  for  the  defense  of  the  English 
Church  against  spiritual  lethargy,  and  political  and  ecclesias- 
tical liberalism.  The  year  after  the  Lectures  on  Heroes,  New- 
man, then  an  Anglican  clergyman,  afterwards  a  cardinal  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  of  whom  Carlyle  said  that  he 
had  "  the  brains  of  a  good-sized  rabbit,"  wrote  the  famous 
Tract  No.  90,  contending  that  the  articles  of  the  English 
Church  were  not  essentially  at  variance  with  the  doctrines 
of  Rome. 

Pages  192,  193 

Popery  can  build  .  .  .  Tvelcome  to  do  so  .  .  .  Let  it 
last  as  long  as  it  can  :  with  the  thought  of  this  paragraph 
compare  pp.  84,  So,  and  169,  "  Are  not  all  true  men,"  etc. 
Tolerance,  even  the  rather  patronizing  variety  here  exhib- 
ited, was  not  C.'s  usual  attitude  on  this  subject.  See  also 
pp.  194  and  210  ;  and  P.  and  P.^  II,  xv,  end. 

Page  194 

A  rugged  honesty,  etc. :  this  character  sketch  of  Luther 
would  not  do  ill  for  C.  himself. 

Page  197 

Islam  is  all :  various  reminders  of  Mahomet  in  this  lecture 
recall  to  ns  C.'s  definition  of  the  priest  as  "the  Prophet 
shorn  of  his  more  awful  splendour." 

Page  204 

too  true  -wrhat  we  said,  That  many  men :  was  this  just 
•   what  C.  said  ?   See  p.  168. 

1  Past  and  Present. 


ADDITIONAL  NOTES  359 

Page  206 

obscure  .  .  .  age  of  forty:  compare  Mahomet  aud  Crom- 
well, pp.  74  and  296. 

Page  207 

'burst  ixito  tears  : '  compare  Mahomet,  p.  82. 

Page  211 

a  kind  of  .  .  .  Presidency  and  Sovereignty:  this  is 
true  ill  a  sense  of  all  of  C.'s  lieroes:  compare  p.  20  and  else- 
where, concerniuo:  the  "  hidestructibility  of  Hero-worship." 
a  true  eye  for  the  ridiculous  :  a  point  that  C.  would  not 
miss. 

Page  214 

Let  them  introduce  :  another  "  might  and  right "  passage. 


LECTURE  V 

Page  215 

Johnson,  Rousseau,  Burns  :  it  would  have  been  interest- 
ing to  hear  the  remarks  of  these  three  men,  assembled  to- 
gether and  confronted  with  one  another  as  types  of  the 
Hero-Man-of-Letters.  "  Necessity  makes  strange  bed-fel- 
lows." "  The  common  point  of  resemblance  is  in  their  being 
sincere  men :  defined  sincerity  as  the  earnest  living  belief 
in  what  you  profess  to  believe  in."  C.  Fox's  Journa/s,^  p.  96. 
endeavouring  to  speak-forth  :  notice  that  this  definition 
does  not  include  Dante  or  Chaucer  or  Shakespeare.  Milton 
could  n't  have  "  found  subsistence  "  for  long  on  the  paltry 
sum  paid  him  for  Paradise  Lost.  Dick  Steele  (Tatler,  1709- 
1711)  was  one  of  the  earliest  authors  that  won  any  success 
in  an  attempt  to  eke  out  an  insufficient  income  by  the  help 
of  the  printing-press. 

Page  217 

inspired  .  .  .  'originality,'  'sincerity,'  'genius:'  what 
other  terms  has  C.  used  in  these  lectures  for  the  same 
quality  ?  Read,  mark,  learn,  and  inwardly  digest  the  rest  of 
this  paragraph.  C.'s  Hero,  it  seems,  must,  like  C.  himself, 
hold  the  Transcendental  Philosophy  expounded  in  the  next 
paragraph.  Compare  p.  51.  Transcendental :  "Ascending 
beyond  the  senses."  "  To  a  Transcendentalist,  Matter  has 
an  existence,  but  only  as  a  Phenomenon:  were  we  not  there, 
neither  would  it  be  there  ;  it  is  a  mere  Relation,  or  rather 
the  result  of  a  Relation  between  our  living  Souls  and  the 
great  First  Cause ;  and  depends  for  its  apparent  qualities 
on  our  bodily  and  mental  organs  ;  having  itself  7io  intrinsic 
qualities ;  being,  in  the  common  sense  of  that  word,  No- 

1  Memories  of  Old  Friends  .  .  .  from  the  Journals  and  Letters  of  Caroline  Fox, 
Londou,  1882. 


360  ADDITIONAL  NOTES 

thing.  The  tree  is  green  and  hard,  not  of  its  own  natural 
virtue,  but  simply  because  my  eye  and  my  hand  are  fash- 
ioned so  as  to  discern  such  and  such  appearances  under 
such  and  such  conditions.  .  .  .  Bring  a  sentient  Being  with 
eyes  a  little  different,  with  fingers  ten  times  harder  than 
mine  and  to  him  that  Thing  which  I  call  Tree  shall  be 
yellow  and  soft,  as  truly  as  to  me  it  is  green  and  hard. 
Form  his  Nervous-structure  in  all  points  the  reverse  of  mine, 
and  this  same  Tree  .  .  .  shall  simply  liave  all  properties 
exactly  the  reverse  of  those  I  attribute  to  it.  There  is,  in 
fact,  says  Fichte,  no  Tree  there;  but  only  a  Manifestation 
of  Power  from  something  which  is  not  I.  The  same  is  true 
of  material  Nature  at  large  ...  all  are  Impressions  pro- 
duced on  me  by  something  different  from  me.  .  .  .  Time 
and  Space  themselves  are  not  external  but  internal  entities: 
they  have  no  outward  existence;  there  is  no  Time  and  Space 
out  of  the  mind."  C.'s  Essay  on  Novalis, 

Page  218 

a  perpetual  Priesthood :  the  comparison  reminds  one  of 
the  discussion  of  Vates,  pp.  110  ff.  One  might  go  farther, 
and  point  out  that  the  god  Odin  as  handled  by  C.  is  the 
" camera-obscura  image"  of  his  ideal  king.  Compare  pp. 
275,  276,  and  add.  note. 

Page  220 

Our  chosen  specimen  .  .  .  Goethe :  "  And  knowest  thou 
no  Prophet,  even  in  the  vesture,  environment,  and  dialect 
of  this  age  ?  None  to  whom  the  God-like  had  revealed  it- 
self .  .  .  in  whose  inspired  melody,  even  in  these  rag-gath- 
ering and  rag-burning  days,  Man's  Life  again  begins,  were 
it  but  afar  off,  to  be  divine  ?  Knowest  thon  none  such  ?  I 
know  him,  and  name  him  — Goethe."  S.  R.  Ill,  vii.  such 
is  the  general  state  of  knowledge.  .  .  .  Speak  aa 
I  might  :  granted  that  such  was  the  state  of  knowledge 
also  about  Odin  or  Mahomet,  the  very  fullness  of  Carlyle's 
knowledge  and  hero-worship  of  Goethe  made  the  task  of 
interpreting  him  to  liis  hearers  seem  more  difficult  than  in 
the  case  of  the  others.  C.  evidently  felt  that  Goethe's  prac- 
tical philosophy  of  life  was  very  unlike  that  of  the  average 
of  an  English  audience :  see  Goethe's  saying  "  which  has 
staggered  several,"  p.  112.  Though  C.  had  written  abun- 
dantly of  Goethe  he  could  hardly  take  for  granted  his  hear- 
ers' familiarity  with  the  Goethe  Essays  as  he  could  their 
acquaintance  with  his  Burns. 

Page  221 

fashioning  a  path :  how  is  this  truer  as  said  of  the  literary 
man  than  in  the  case  of  the  lawyer,  minister,  or  physician  ? 
"  Carlyle  would  even  have  his  fraternity  organised  like  the 


ADDITIONAL  NOTES  361 

members  of  other  professions,  though  he  could  ill  chalk  out 
the  plan."    C.  Fox's  Journals,  p.  96. 

Page  223 

In  Books  lies  the  soul:  read  the  rest  of  this  paragraph 
aloud,  exaggerating  the  stresses,  or,  better,  mark  the  ac- 
cented and  unaccented  syllables ;  and  note  how  truly  rhyth- 
mical, without  being  regularly  metrical,  it  is.  Compare 
pp.  114  and  125. 

Page  227 

Byron  ;  C.'s  dislike  for  Byron  appears  in  his  writings  under 
various  forms.  He  adopts  Southey's  name,  "The  Satanic 
School,"  for  the  school  of  Byron  in  poetry.  "  A  dandy  of 
sorrows  and  acquainted  with  grief ''  is  C.'s  formula  for  By- 
ron in  his  Journal.  "  Art  thou  nothing  other  than  a  Vulture, 
then,  that  fliest  through  the  Universe  seeking  after  some- 
what to  eat ;  and  shrieking  dolefully  because  carrion  enough 
is  not  given  thee?  Close  thy  Byron;  open  thy  Goethe." 
S.  R.  II,  ix.  "  He  [C]  thinks  that  we,  on  the  whole,  do  our 
Hero-worship  worse  than  any  Nation  in  this  world  ever  did 
it  before :  that  the  Burns  an  Exciseman,  the  Byron  a  Liter- 
ary Lion,  are  intrinsically,  all  things  considered,  a  baser  and 
falser  phenomenon  than  the  Odin  a  God,  the  Mahomet  a 
Prophet  of  God."   P.  and  P.  I,  vi. 

Pages  230,  231 

If  you  asked  me  ...  I  should  beg  to  say :  C.  has  been 
found  fault  with  abundantly  for  more  successfully  diagnos- 
ing the  world's  ailments  than  suggesting  remedies.  An  an- 
swer to  this  criticism  is  suggested  on  pp.  233,  234:  "  For  as 
soon  as  men  get  to  discern,"  etc.  and  "  Light  is  the  one  thing 
wanted,"  etc.  no  evil  to  be  poor:  C.  certainly  could 
speak  with  authority  on  this  subject.  International  copyright 
laws  have  removed  one  of  the  aids  to  literary  poverty  of 
C.'s  time.  If  the  next  paragraph  be  sound  doctrine,  one  can 
only  pity  the  modern  Man  (or  more  accurately  Woman)  of 
Letters  as  author  of  the  month's  "  Best  Seller." 

Page  236 

Parliament  :  C.'s  opinion  of  the  British  House  of  Commons 
is  concretely  expressed  in  S.  R.  I,  v,  end  :  "Man  is  a  Tool- 
using  Animal  ...  he  collects,  apparently  by  lot,  six-hun- 
dred and  fifty-eight  miscellaneous  individuals,  and  says  to 
them,  Make  this  nation  toil  for  us,  bleed  for  lis,  hunger  and 
sorrow  and  sin  for  us  •  and  they  do  it." 

Page  239 

a  more  beggarly  one  :  see  p.  104,  and  add.  note. 

Page  241 

not  even  a  devil :  "And  now  we  are  deprived  of  the  hope 
of  a  future  life.  Hell  being  a  myth."  —  Freshman  theme  ou 


362  ADDITIONAL  NOTES 

The  Decay  of  Faith.  Belief  I  define  to  be  :  in  connection 
with  tliis  paragraph  and  tlie  two  toUowiug,  re-read  pp.  166, 
167. 

Page  245 

gleam  of  Time  betw^een  t'vro  Eternities:  "Thus,  like 
some  wild-Haming,  wild-thundering  train  of  Heaven's  Ar- 
tillery, does  this  mysterious  Mankind  thunder  and  flame, 
in  long-drawn,  quick-succeeding  grandeur,  through  the  un- 
known Deep.  Thus,  like  a  God-created,  Hre-breathing  Spirit- 
host,  we  emerge  from  the  Inane.  .  .  .  O  Heaven,  whither? 
Sense  knows  not;  Faith  knows  not;  only  that  it  is  through 
Mystery  to  Mystery,  from  God  and  to  God.  '  We  are  such 
stuff  .  .  .  ' "    S.R.  Ill,  viii,  end. 

Page  248 

stalking  mournful :  there  is  abundant  material  for  a  quite 
different,  but  equally  true,  picture  of  Jolinson.  He  was  much 
of  a  humorist  and  fun-lover  :  one  of  his  Oxford  tutors  de- 
scribed him  as  "  gay  and  frolicksome." 

Page  249 

The  essence  of  originality:  compare  p.  176. 

Page  253 

'  in  a  "world  where  much  is  to  be  done : '  the  phrase 
occurs  in  one  of  Johnson's  prayers,  "  Against  inquisitive  and 
perplexing  thoughts,"  which  illustrates  his  conservatism  : 
..."  enable  me  to  drive  from  me  all  such  unquiet  and  per- 
plexing thoughts  as  may  mislead  or  hinder  me  in  the  practice 
of  those  duties  which  Thou  hast  required.  .  .  .  And  while 
it  shall  please  Thee  to  continue  me  in  this  world,  where  much 
is  to  be  done,  and  little  to  be  known,  teach  me  by  Thy  Holy 
Spirit,  to  withdraw  my  mind  from  unprofitable  and  danger- 
ous enquiries,  from  difficulties  vainly  curious,  and  doubts 
impossible  to  be  solved."  .  .  .  Boswell's  Johnson  (year  1784). 
'  Clear  your  mind  of  Cant  : '  compare  p.  99.  One  defini- 
tion of  cant  gisen  by  Johnson  in  his  Dictionary  is:  "A  whin- 
ing pretension  to  goodness  in  formal  and  affected  terms." 
Boswell  reports.  May  15,  1783,  the  following  remarks  of 
Johnson:  "My  dear  friend,  clear  your  mind  of  cant.  You 
may  talk  as  other  people  do :  you  may  say  to  a  man,  '  Sir,  I 
am  your  most  humble  servant.'  You  are  not  his  most  hum- 
ble servant.  .  .  .  You  tell  a  man, '  I  am  sorry  you  had  such 
bad  weather  the  last  day  of  your  journey,  and  were  so  much 
wet.'  You  don't  care  six-pence  whether  he  is  wet  or  drj'. 
You  may  talk  in  this  manner ;  it  is  a  mode  of  talking  in 
Society:  but  don't  think  foolishly."  a  measured  grandi- 
loquence :  Boswell  (year  1773)  reports  Goldsmith's  say- 
ing to  Johnson  :  "  If  you  were  to  make  little  fishes  talk, 
tiiey  would  talk  like  whales."   Macaulay  says  that  John- 


ADDITIONAL  NOTES  363 

son's  sentences  were  "done  out  of  English  into  John- 
sonese." Johnson  himself  observes  (Idler,  No.  70),  "  He 
that  tliinks  with  more  extent  than  another  will  want  words 
of  larger  meaning."  He  remarked  of  a  dramatic  burlesque 
{The  Rehearsal):  "  It  has  not  wit  enough  to  keep  it  sweet;" 
then  after  a  jwiuse:  "It  lias  not  vitality  enough  to  preserve 
it  from  putrefaction."  Perhaps  the  best  example  of  his 
"  size  of  phraseology  "  is  the  famous  ne/^t'or^- definition  in  the 
Dictionary  :  "  Anything  reticulated  or  decussated,  at  equal 
distances,  with  interstices  between  the  intersections."  For 
one  of  the  best  examples  of  prose  style  extant,  read  John- 
son's famous  letter  to  Lord  Chesterfield,  Feb.  7,  1755,  con- 
cerning the  dedication  of  the  Dictionary. 

Page  254 

his  Dictionary,  one  might  have  traced  there  ...  a 
genuine  man:  the  mark  of  Johnson's  personality  as  well 
as  his  learning  is  here  and  there  discoverable :  "  Lexico- 
grapher. Writer  of  dictionaries;  harmless  drudge  that 
busies  himself  in  tracing  the  original,  and  detailing  the  sig- 
nificance of  words."  His  dislike  of  all  things  Scotch  pro- 
vokes the  following  definition:  "Oats.  A  grain  which  in 
England  is  generally  given  to  horses,  but  in  Scotland  sup- 
ports the  people."  Bozzy  :  after  Macaulay's  assertion  that 
Boswell's  success  was  an  accidental  consequence  of  his  super- 
lative asininity,  and  Carlyle's  that  it  was  a  greatness  inev- 
itably thrust  upon  him  by  his  hero-worship,  Mr.  Birrell's 
suggestion  (/n  the  Name  of  the  Bodleian:  The  JohnKonian 
Legend),  that  Bozzy  really  knew  what  he  was  (artistically) 
about,  is  worth  pondering. 

Page  257 

Egoism ;  .  .  .  the  source  ...  of  all  faults :  compare  the 
god  Wish,  p.  25  and  elsewhere. 

Page  259 

His  Books :  "  The  Confessions  are  the  only  writings  of  his 
which  I  have  read  with  any  interest ;  tliere  you  see  tlie  man 
such  as  he  really  was,  though  I  can't  say  that  it  is  a  duty  to 
lay  open  the  Bluebeard  chamliers  of  the  heart."  Report  of 
the  lecture  in  C.  Fox's  Journals,  p.  97. 

Page  261 

Hero  .  .  .  Robert  Burns  :  the  whole  of  C.'s  short  Essay 
on  Burns  ought  to  be  read  in  connection  with  the  following 
pages.  Notice  at  how  many  points  C.  was  at  one  with  Burns 
in  the  circumstances  of  early  life,  and  therefore  supremely 
qualified  to  understand  him.  "  Burns  was  the  last  of  our 
heroes,  and  here  our  Scotch  Patriot  was  in  his  element. 
Most  graphically  did  he  sketch  some  passages  in  the  poet's 
life."   C.  Fox's  Journals,  p.  98. 


364  ADDITIONAL  NOTES 

Page  262 

Father  ,  .  .  silent  Hero :  compare  C.'s  own  case. 

Page  264 

His  writings  .  .  .  only  a  poor  fragment :  compare  pp. 
155,  156. 

Page  271 

But  — !  — :  not  many  writers  would  venture  just  such  an 
ending.  The  spoken  lecture  had  a  more  conventional  close: 
"  He  then  told  us  he  had  more  than  occupied  our  time,  aond 
rushed  down-stairs,"   C  Fox's  Journals,  p.  98. 

LECTURE  VI 

Page  273 

Ideals  .  .  .  never  .  .  .  completely  embodied :  "  For, 
alas,  the  Ideal  always  has  to  grow  in  the  Real,  and  to  seek 
out  its  hed  and  hoard  there,  often  in  a  very  sorry  way.  No 
beautif ulest  Poet  is  a  Bird-of- Paradise,  living  on  perfumes  ; 
sleeping  in  the  jether  with  outspread  wings.  The  Heroic, 
independent  of  bed  and  board,  is  found  in  Drury  Lane  Theatre 
only ;  to  avoid  disappointments,  let  us  bear  this  in  mind." 
P.  and  P.  II,  iv. 

Page  276 

a  Divine  Right  or  else  a  Diabolic  Wrong  :  this  sen- 
tence rightly  understood  contains  the  essence  of  C.'s  thought 
on  hero-worship.  In  its  special  application  to  Kings,  com- 
pare S.  R.  HI,  vii;  "  He  carries  with  him  an  authority  from 
God,  or  man  will  never  give  it  liiiu.  Can  I  choose  my  own 
King  ?  I  can  clioose  my  own  King  Popinjay,  and  play 
what  farce  or  tragedy  I  may  with  him  :  but  he  who  is  (to 
be  my  Ruler,  whast'  will  is  to  be  higher  than  my  will,  was 
chosen  for  me  in  Heaven.  Neither  except  in  such  Obeflieiice 
to  the  Heaven-chosen  is  Freedom  so  much  as  conceivable." 
"Every  ruler  lian  a  divine  right  to  govern,  in  so  far  as  he 
represents  God.  bnt  in  no  other."  C.  Fox's /owrna/s,  p.  100. 
Compare  also  P.  mid  P.  1,  vi:  "Yes,  friends  ;  Hero-kings, 
and  a  whole  wurki  nut  unlieroic,  —  there  lies  the  port  :ind 
happy  haven,  towards  which,  through  all  these  stormtost 
seas,  French  ReM)Inti()ns,  Chartisms,  Manchester  Insurrec- 
tions, that  make  tlie  heart  sick  in  these  bad  days,  the  Su- 
preme Powers  are  driving  us.  On  tlie  whole,  blessed  be  the 
Supreme  Powers,  steru  as  they  are  !  Towards  that  haven 
will  we,  O  friends:  let  all  true  men,  witii  what  of  faculty 
there  is  in  tiiero,  bend  valiantly,  incessantly,  with  thousand- 
fold endeavour,  thither,  thither  !  Tiiere.  or  else  in  the  Oceaii- 
abvsses,  it  is  very  clear  to  me  we  shall  arrive." 

Page  277 

the  beginning  .  .  .  Luther :  see  p.  173. 


ADDITIONAL  NOTES  365 

Page  284 

whose  vrhole  world  is  forms  :  "  I  labored  nothing,"  said 
Laud,  "  more  than  that  the  external  worship  of  God  .  .  . 
might  be  preserved,  and  that  with  as  much  decency  and  uni- 
formity as  might  be,  —  being  still  of  opinion  that  unity  can- 
not long  continue  in  the  church  when  uniformity  is  shut  out 
at  the  church  doors." 

Page  285 

Forms  which  grow:  see  pp.  170,  250;  also  S.  R.  Ill,  ii 
("Church  Clothes"). 

Page  286 

the  essence  of  all  Churches:  compare  Ruskin,  Sesame: 
"  For  there  is  a  true  church  wherever  one  hand  meets  an- 
other helpfully,  and  that  is  the  only  holy  or  Mother  Church 
which  ever  was  or  ever  shall  be." 

Page  293 

Cromwell's  falsity  .  .  .  incredible:  note  the  similarities 
between  C.'s  vindication  of  Cromwell  and  his  vindication  of 
Mahomet. 

Page  308 

Great  men  are  not  ambitious  in  that  sense :  but  com- 
pare Milton :  — 

"  Fadie  is  the  spur  that  the  clear  spirit  doth  raise 
(That  last  infirmity  of  uoble  miud) 
To  scorn  delights,  and  live  laborious  days." 

Lycidas,  70-72. 

Page  311 

To  unfold  your  self,  to  work  :  "  Hence,  too,  the  folly 
of  that  impossible  Precept,  Know  thyself ;  till  it  be  translated 
into  this  partially  possible  one.  Know  what  thou  canst  loork  at." 
S.  R.  II,  vii.  "  Produce  !  Produce  !  Were  it  but  the  piti- 
fullest  infinitesimal  fraction  of  a  Product,  produce  it  in  God's 
name  !  'T  is  the  utmost  thou  hast  in  thee :  out  with  it, 
then."   II,  ix. 

Page  316 

Cromw^ell's  last  words:  "Truly  God  is  good;  indeed 
He  is  ;  He  will  not " —  Then  his  speech  failed  him,  but  as 
I  apprehended,  it  was,  "  He  will  not  leave  me."  This  say- 
ing, "  God  is  good  "  he  frequently  used  all  along  ;  and  would 
speak  it  with  much  cheerfulness,  and  fervour  of  spirit,  in 
the  midst  of  his  pains.  —  Again  he  said:  "  I  would  be  willing 
to  live  to  be  farther  serviceable  to  God  and  His  People: 
but  my  work  is  done.  Yet  God  will  be  with  His  People." 
Carlyle's  Cromwell. 

Page  321 

Milton  .  .  .  could  applaud  : 

"  Cromwell,  our  chief  of  men,  who  through  a  cloud 
Not  of  war  only,  but  detractions  rude. 
Guided  by  faith  and  matchless  fortitude. 
To  peace  and  truth  thy  glorious  way  hast  ploughed, 


3GG  ADDITIONAL  NOTES 


And  Dunbar  field,  resouuds  thy  praises  loud, 

And  Worcester's  laureate  wreath  :  yet  much  remains 

To  couquer  still;  Peace  liatli  her  victories 

No  less  renowned  than  War. 

Sonnet,  To  the  Lord  General  Cromwell. 

Page  327 

His  complaint  ...  of  the  heavy  burden :  "  I  would 
have  been  glad,"  said  Cromwell,  "to  have  lived  under  my 
woodside,  to  have  kept  a  flock  of  sheep,  rather  than  under- 
take such  a  government  as  this." 

Page  328 

rash  ...  to  pronounce  him  .  .  .  honest  man:  various 
rather  mild  attempts  were  made  from  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century  to  vindicate  the  character  of  Cromwell, 
but  the  people  at  large  remained  partially  or  not  at  all  con- 
vinced. Carlyle  was  already  making  plans  and  gathering 
material  for  his  Cromioell,  which  appeared  a  few  years 
later,  and  still  stands  as  the  authoritative  exposition  of 
Cromwell's  character.  He  wrote  to  Emerson  a  few  months 
later:  "  I  am  now  over  head  and  ears  in  Cromwellian  Books; 
studying,  for  perhaps  the  fourth  time  in  my  life,  to  see  if  it 
be  possible  to  get  any  credible  face-to-face  acquaintance  with 
our  English  Puritan  period  ;  .  .  .  Nevertheless  courage  !  I 
have  got,  within  the  last  twelve  months,  actually,  as  it  were, 
to  see  that  this  Cromwell  was  one  of  the  greatest  souls  ever 
born  of  the  English  kin  ;  a  great  amorpjjous  semi-articulate 
Baresark;  very  interesting  to  me."  "  After  many  other  most 
effective  touches  in  this  sketch,  which  compelled  you  to  side 
with  Carlyle  as  to  Cromwell's  self-devotion  and  magnanim- 
ity, he  gave  the  finishing-stroke  with  an  air  of  most  innocent 
wonderment  — '  And  yet  I  believe  1  am  the  first  to  say  that 
Cromwell  was  an  honest  man  ! '  "  C.  Fox's  Journals,  p.  101. 
The  day  after  this  lecture  C.  wrote  to  his  mother :  "  1  con- 
trived to  tell  them  something  about  poor  Cromwell,  and  I 
think  to  convince  them  that  he  was  a  great  and  true  man, 
the  valiant  soldier  in  England  of  what  John  Kuox  had 
preached  in  Scotland." 

Page  330 

blamable  ambition:  see  p.  311.  A  man  in  no  case  has 
liberty  to  tell  lies  :  it  is  worth  while  noting  C.'s  opinion 
on  this  poiut,  when  the  contrary  view  is  so  often  defended. 

Page  338 

"  He  then  toldus  that  the  subject  which  he  had  endeavoured 
to  unfold  in  three  weeks  was  more  calculated  for  a  six 
months'  story  ;  he  had,  however,  been  much  interested  in 
going  through  it  with  us,  even  in  the  naked  way  he  had 
done,  thanked  us  for  our  attention  and  sympathy,  wished  us 
a  cordial  farewell,  and  vanished."    C.  Fox's  Journals,  p.  102. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  FOR   OUTSIDE   READING 

Lect.  I.  Morley's  English  Writers,  I,  264-275,  and  II,  335-365, 
iucludiug  translation  of  Voluspa;  Mallet's  iVor^Aeni  Antiqui- 
ties (Bohu  Libr.)  esp.  79  fP.  and  402-456;  R.  B.  Anderson's 
Norse  Mythology ;  S.  Laing's  Translation  of  Heimskringla 
(New  Ed.,  Anderson,  1889)  ;  Grimm's  Teutonic  Mythology ; 
G.  Vigfusson's  Prolegomena  to  Ed.  of  Sturlunga  Saga;  Ma- 
bie's  Norse  Stories  Retold  from  the  Eddas ;  Corpus  Poeticum 
Boreale. 

Lect.  II.  Lives  of  Mahomet  by  Muir,  Sprenger,  and  Syed  Ameer 
Ali ;  Bosworth  Smith's  Mohammed  and  Mohammedanism; 
W.  Irving's  Mohammed  and  his  Successors;  Gibbon's  2'Ae 
Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  chap.  1;  Wherry's  A 
Comprehe7isive  Commentary  on  the  Quran,  with  Sale's  Trans- 
lation ;  Rodwell's  Translation  (attempting  to  arrange  chap- 
ters in  chronological  order) ;  Niildeke's  2'Ae  Koran,  in 
Sketches  from  Eastern  History ;  Bnrckhardt's  Travels  in 
Arabia. 

Lect.  III.  C.  A.  Dinsmore's  Aids  to  the  Study  of  Dante  ;  M.  F. 
Rossetti's  A  Shadow  of  Dante;  Davidson's  Scartazzini's 
Handbook  to  Dante;  Symonds's  A  Study  of  Dante;  Low- 
ell's Dante  (Essay)  ;  Norton's  and  Rossetti's  Translations 
of  La  Vita  Nuoua;  Norton's  literal  prose  Translation  of  The 
Divine  Comedy;  Longfellow's,  Dean  Flumptre's,  and  Gary's 
verse  Translations.  Sidney  Lee's  Life  of  Shakespeare  is  the 
best  authority  on  that  subject. 

Lect.  IV.  Lives  of  Luther  by  Michelet  (translated),  J.  Kostlin 
(translated),  J.  A.  Froude,  and  H.  E.  Jacobs;  Luther's 
Ninety -five  Theses  are  given  in  Larned's  History  for  Ready 
Reference,  IV,  pp.  2446  S.;  Luther's  Table-Talk  (tra,ns\ated) ; 
Ranke's,  D'Aubigud's,  and  Fischer's  Histories  of  the  Refor- 
mation ;  Seebohni's  The  Protestant  Revolution.  Lives  of  Knox 
by  McCrie,  and  Hume  Brown;  Knox's  History  of  the  Re- 
formation in  Scotland;  Carlyle's  The  Portraits  of  John  Knox. 

Lect.  V.  B.  Hill's  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson;  Macaulay's  John- 
son (written  for  Encycl.  Brit.)  ;  Macaulay's  and  Carlyle's 
Essays  reviewing  Croker's  Boswell's  Johnson.  John  Morley's 
Rousseau;  Lincoln's  Rousseau  and  the  French  Revolutioti; 
Davidson's  Rousseau  and  Education  according  to  Nature; 
Lowell's  Rousseau  (Essay).   Lives  of  Burns  by  Lockhart, 


368  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Blackie,  Shairp ;   R.  L.  Stevenson's  "  Burns  "  iu   Familiar 

Studies  of  Men  and  Books. 
Lect.  VI.  Carlyle's  Oliver  Cronuvell's  Letters  and  Speeches;  Lives 
of  Cromwell  by  S.  R.  Gardiner  and  Theodore  Roosevelt; 
Essays  on  Cromwell  in  Goldwin  Smith's  Three  English 
Statesmen,  and  Forster's  Biographical  Essays ;  Chapters  on 
"  Puritan  England  "  in  J.  R.  Green's  Short  History  of  the 
English  People.  Lives  of  Napoleon  by  W.  M.  Sloane,  and 
J.  H.  Rose ;  Memoirs  of  Bourrienne,  and  Las  Casas. 


SUGGESTIONS   FOR  TEACHING 

The  objects  of  studying  Heroes  may  be  resolved  into  three 
main  points:  (1)  knowledge  of  the  characters  and  influence,  and, 
to  a  varying  extent,  the  lives,  of  certain  of  the  greatest  men  in 
history,  —  this  was  the  purpose  of  the  lectures  as  avowed  by 
Carlyle  himself  at  the  beginning  of  the  course  ;  (2)  acquaintance 
with  the  teachings,  literary  style,  and  character  of  one  of  the 
most  forceful  and  interesting  personalities  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, as  revealed  through  one  of  his  most  popular  books ;  (3) 
increase  of  that  general  culture  of  the  moral  as  well  as  of  intel- 
lectual faculties  "which  "  cometh  not  with  observation  "  so  much 
as  from  unconscious  absorption  of  the  best  in  the  best  books  and 
the  best  men.  Carlyle's  relentless  earnestness  and  insistence  on 
the  side  of  truth  and  high  endeavor,  and  his  enormous  range  of 
reading  in  literature  and  history  make  Heroes  one  of  the  richest 
of  books  for  the  furtherance  of  this  purpose.  The  editorial  ma- 
terial of  the  volume  has  been  prepared  with  these  aims  in  view ; 
but  in  what  manner,  by  what  illustration  or  discussion  the  class- 
room exercises  may  be  made  to  contribute  most  to  the  student's 
profit  must  of  course  be  left  in  each  case  to  the  teacher's  own 
device.  A  suggestive  —  far  from  exhaustive  —  list  of  topics  for 
consideration  in  class,  or  for  written  recitation  or  examination,  is 
given  below:  an  eight  to  ten  minute  written  test  on  the  day's 
lesson,  followed  by  general,  informal  discussion  with  the  class  is 
an  excellent  (with  large  classes  often  the  only  possible)  way  of 
making  the  most  of  the  recitation  hour. 

The  book  gains  in  significance  with  every  bit  of  acquaintance 
with  the  widely  varied  style  and  subjects  of  Carlyle's  other  writ- 
ings, —  particularly  Sartor  Resartus,  which  (or  at  least  selected 
chapters  from  which)  the  student  may  be  most  profitably  encour- 
aged to  read  and  helped  to  understand.  Tlie  Editor  has  foimd 
the  assignment  of  a  few  lessons  in  Prof.  Bliss  Perry's  Selections 
from  Carlyle  in  the  Little  Masterpieces  Series  very  helpful  in 
bringing  before  the  student  other  aspects  of  Carlyle  as  teacher, 
historian,  and  literary  artist,  or  in  enforcing  those  presented  in 
Heroes.  If  the  time  allotted  to  the  study  of  the  book  is  short,  it 
will  be  found  better  on  the  whole  to  study  I,  III,  and  V  thor- 
oughly in  detail,  and  II,  possibly  VI,  and  if  quite  necessary  IV, 
more  hastily. 


370  SUGGESTIONS    FOR    TEACHING 

Lecture  I.  Definition  of  religion;  of  worship;  of  hero-worship. 
Distinction  between  Paganism,  Christianisni,  and  Scepticism. 
The  divineuess  of  Nature.  Description  of  Iceland;  its  im- 
portance to  the  student  of  Norse  religion  and  literature.  The 
tree  Igdrasil.  The  career  of  the  man  Odin.  The  gods  and 
jotuns  of  the  Norse  religion;  its  morals.  Anecdotes  about 
Thor.  Reasons  why  C.  chose  the  Norse  religion  for  bis 
illustration  in  preference  to  any  other. 

Lecture  II.  Description  of  Arabia  and  Arab  character  ;  the 
Book  of  Job.  Mahomet's  life,  570-622.  His  personal  char- 
acteristics. The  chief  truths  of  Mahomet's  religion  and  how 
he  learned  them.  Its  chief  defects.  Mahomet  and  miracles. 
The  Koran.  The  Mahometan  idea  of  the  future  life;  the 
truth  of  it.  With  what  arguments  does  C.  refute  the  "  im- 
postor Iheory  ? " 

Lecture  III.  "  The  distinction  and  identity  of  Poet  and  Prophet." 
Present  arguments  to  defend  and  to  refute  the  assertion  "  that 
the  Hero  can  be  Poet,  Prophet,  King,  Priest,  or  what  you 
will,"  etc.  C.'s  views  on  poetry.  The  life* of  Dante.  The 
characteristics  of  his  personality  and  his  work;  illnstrate 
from  his  Divine  Comedy.  p]nuinerate  the  points  of  resem- 
blance between  the  religions  of  the  Norsemen,  Mahomet, 
and  Dante.  The  morality  of  Shakespeare.  "  It  is  the  Poet's 
first  gift,  as  it  is  all  men's,  that  he  have  intellect  enough." 
"  Shakspeare's  Art  is  not  Artifice."  Shakespeare's  laugh- 
ter. Shakespeare  as  historian.  Shakespeare  unconsciously  a 
prophet.  The  political  value  of  Shakespeare  to  the  English 
race.    Comparison  of  Dante  and  Shakespeare. 

Lecture  IV.  The  relation  of  the  religious  beliefs  of  past,  pre- 
sent, and  future;  "originality"  in  religion.  Idolatry  char- 
acteristic of  all  religions.  The  three  acts  of  Protestantism. 
The  life  of  Luther  previous  to  the  Diet  of  Worms.  His  trial 
at  Worms.  His  prose  style.  Resemblances  between  Luther 
and  Mahomet;  Luther  and  Dante.  Knox's  services  to  Scot- 
land.  Knox's  ideal  of  government;  C.'s  comment. 

Lecture  V.  Definition  of  the  genuine  man  of  letters  ;  its  appli- 
cability to  Carlyle.  The  functions  of  books  in  the  modern 
world.  Enumerate  the  obstacles  against  which  Johnson  had 
to  contend.  Johnson's  gospel.  Rousseau's  heroism;  his  mis- 
sion. Resemblances  between  Burns  and  Carlyle.  Burns's 
"  Lionism." 

Lecture  VI.  The  divine  right  of  Kings.  The  significance  and 
achievement  of  Puritanism.  Arguments  presented  by  Car- 
lyle in  vindication  of  Cromwell.  Cromwell  and  his  Parlia- 
ments. Napoleon's  "  kind  of  sincerity  ; "  his  "  faith,"  his 
"  quackeries." 

General.    Define  "  Hero."    The  value  of  hero-worship.    Hero- 


S  UGGES  TIONS    FOR  •  TEA  CHING  S  T 1 

worship  the  test  of  any  age.  C.'s  ideas  on  government. 
Belief  and  action.  Scepticism;  its  consequences.  The  Frencli 
Kevolution.  Profit-and-loss  philosophy.  Silence.  The  world 
of  external  nature  as  treated  of  in  Heroes.  Discuss,  and 
illustrate  by  specific  passages,  the  characteristic  qualities  of 
C.'s  style  in  Heroes.  What  has  the  study  of  Heroes  and 
Hero-  Worship  been  worth  to  you  ? 


CARLYLE'S  INDEX 


AoiNCOUET,  Shakspeare's  battle  of,  155. 

Ali,  young,  Mahomet's  kinsman  and  con- 
vert, 81. 

Allegory,  the  sportful  shadow  of  earnest 
Faith,  7,  43. 

Ambition,  foolish  charge  of,  308;  laud- 
able ambition,  311. 

Arabia  and  the  Arabs,  65. 

Balder,  the  white  Sungod,  25,  48. 

Belief,  the  true  god-announcing  miracle, 
79, 105,  203,  241 ;  war  of,  283.  See  Re- 
ligion, Scepticism. 

Benthamism,  104,  240. 

Books,  miraculous  influence  of,  223,  229  ; 
our  modern  University,  Church  and 
Parliament,  224. 

Boswell,  254. 

Bunyau'a  Pilgrim's  Progress,  8. 

Burns,  2G1;  his  birth,  and  humble  heroic 
parents,  202  ;  rustic  dialect,  203  ;  the 
most  gifted  British  soul  of  his  century, 
264  ;  resemblance  to  Mirabeau,  205  ; 
his  sincerity,  207;  his  visit  to  Edin- 
burgh, Lion-hunted  to  death,  209,  270. 

Caabah,  the,  with  its  Black  Stone  and 
Sacred  Well,  68. 

Canopus,  Worship  of,  12. 

Charles  I.,  fatally  incapable  of  being  dealt 
with,  297. 

China,  literary  governors  of,  235. 

Church.    See  Books. 

Cromwell,  288 ;  his  hypochondria,  294, 
301 ;  early  marriage  and  conversion  ; 
a  quiet  farmer,  295;  his  Ironsides, 
298  ;  his  Speeches,  304,  323  ;  his  '  am- 
bition,' and  the  like,  308  ;  dismisses 
the  Rump  Parliament,  320,  321  ;  Pro- 
tectorship and  Parliamentary  Futili- 
ties, 323 ;  his  last  days  and  closing 
sorrows,  327. 

Dante,  117;  biography  in  his  Book  and 
Portrait,  117  ;  his  birth,  education,  and 
early  career,  118,  119 ;  love  for  Bea- 
trice, unhappy  marriage,  banishment, 
120,  121  ;  uncourtier-like  ways,  122  ; 
death,  125 ;  his  Divina  Commedia genu- 
inely a  song,  120  ;  the  Unseen  World, 
as  figured  in  the  Christianity  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  137  ;  '  uses  '  of  Dante,  141. 

Divid,  the  Hebrew  King,  G4. 

Divine  Right  of  Kings,  275. 


Duty,  42,  88 ;  infinite  nature  of,  103 ; 
sceptical  spiritual  paralysis,  237. 

Edda,  the  Scandinavian,  22. 
Eighteenth  Centuiy,  the  sceptical,  237- 

246,  289. 
Elizabethan  Era,  144. 

Faults,  his,  not  the  criterion  of  any  man, 

64. 
Fichte's  theory  of  literary  men,  218. 
Fire,  miraculous  nature  of,  24. 
Forms,  necessity  for,  285. 
Frost.    See  Fire. 

4 
Goethe's  '  characters,'  148  ;   notablest  of 

literary  men,  219. 
Graphic,  secret  of  being,  131. 
Gray's  misconception  of  Norse  lore,  47. 

Hampden,  288. 

Heroes,  Univer.sal  History  the  united 
biographies  of,  1,  41  ;  how  '  little 
critics'  accomit  for  great  men,  17  ;  all 
Heroes  fundamentally  of  the  same 
stuff,  39,  59,  108,  162,  215,  200 ;  Hero- 
ism possible  to  all,  178,  203  ;  Intellect 
the  primary  outfit ;  149  ;  no  man  a 
hero  to  a  valel-soul,  254,  255,  289,  300. 

Hero-worship  the  tap-root  of  all  Reli- 
gion, 15-21,  58  ;  perennial  in  man,  20, 
115,  177,  281. 

Hutchinson  and  Cromwell,  288,  327. 

Iceland,  the  home  of  Norse  Poets,  22. 

Idolatry,  109;  criminal  only  when  in- 
sincere, 171. 

Igdrasil,  the  Life-Tree,  28,  144,  238. 

Intellect,  the  summary  of  man's  gifts, 
150,  236. 

Islam,  77. 

Job,  the  Book  of,  67. 

Johnson's  difficulties,  poverty,  hypochon- 
dria, 247  ;  rude  self-help  ;  stanus  genu- 
inely by  the  old  formulas,  249:  his  noble 
iiuconscious  sincerity,  251  ;  twofold 
Gospel,  of  Prudence  and  hatred  of 
Cant,  253 ;  his  Dictionary,  254;  the 
brave  old  Samuel,  255,  312. 

Jotuns,  23,  49. 

Kadijah,  the  good,  Mahomet's  first  Wife, 
74,  79. 


374 


INDEX 


King,  the,  a  siiramary  of  all  the  varioiis 
figures  of  Heroism,  ■27'J  ;  indispens- 
able in  all  movements  of  men,  317. 

Knox's  influence  on  Scotland,  '202 ;  the 
bravest  of  Scotchmen,  205 ;  his  unas- 
suming career  ;  is  sent  to  tlie  French 
Galleys,  200;  his  colloquies  with  Queen 
Mary,  209  ;  vein  of  drollery  ;  a  brother 
to  high  and  to  low;  his  death,  212. 

Koran,  the,  88. 

Lamaism,  Grand,  6. 

Leo  X.,  the  elegant  Pagan  Pope,  185. 

Liberty  and  E<|uality,  178,  281. 

Literary  Men,  215 ;  in  China,  235. 

Literature, chaotic  condition  of,  221  ;  not 
our  heaviest  evil,  236. 

Luther's  birtli  and  parentage,  178;  hard- 
ship and  rigorous  necessity ;  death  of 
Alexis;  becomes  monk,  180;  his  reli- 
gious despair;  finds  a  Bible;  deliver- 
ance from  darkness,  181 ;  Rome;  Tet- 
zel,  183  ;  burns  the  Pope's  Bull,  187  ; 
at  the  Diet  of  Worms,  188  ;  King  of 
the  Reformation,  193  ;  '  Duke-Georges 
nine  days  running,'  196 ;  his  little 
daughter's  deathbed  ;  hi»  solitary  Pat- 
mos,  197  ;  his  Portrait,  199. 

Mahomet's  birth,  boyhood,  and  youth, 
71;  marries  Kadijah,  74;  quiet,  unam- 
bitious life,  74  ;  divine  commission,  77 ; 
the  good  Kadijah  believes  him  ;  Seid  ; 
young  Ali,  80  ;  offences,  and  sore  strug- 
gles, 81;  flight  from  Mecca;  being 
driven  to  take  the  sword,  he  uses  it, 
84 ;  the  Koran,  88 ;  a  veritable  Hero, 
98 ;  Seid's  death,  98 ;  freedom  from 
Cant,  99  ;  the  infinite  nature  of  Duty, 
103. 

Mary,  Queen,  and  Elhox,  209. 

Mayflower,  sailing  of  the,  201. 

Mecca,  70. 

Middle  Ages,  represented  by  Dante  and 
Shakspeare,  137,  139,  143. 

Montrose,  the  Hero-Cavalier,  317. 

Musical,  all  deep  things,  114. 

Napoleon,  a  portentous  mixture  of  Quack 
and  Hero,  329  ;  his  instinct  for  the 
practical,  330 ;  his  democratic  faith 
and  heart-liatred  for  anarchy,  .332 ; 
apostatised  from  his  old  faith  in  Facts, 
and  took  to  believing  in  Semblances, 
334 ;  this  Napoleonism  was  unjust, 
and  co^d  not  last,  336. 

Nature  an  one  great  Miracle,  11,  94,  198  ; 
a  righteous  Umpire,  85. 

Novalis,  on  Man,  14;  Belief,  80;  Shak- 
speare, 152. 

Odin,  the  first  Norse  '  man  of  genius,'  29; 
historic  rumours  and  guesses,  .32  ;  how 
he  came  to  be  deified,  35 ;  invented 
'runes,'  38;  Hero,  Prophet,  God,  39. 

Olaf ,  King,  and  Thor,  55. 


Original,  the,  man,  the  sincere  man,  63, 
176. 

Paganism,  Scandinavian,  4;  not  mere 
Allegory,  7  ;  Nature-worship,  9,  41 ; 
Hero-worship,  13  ;  creed  of  our  fathers, 
21,  50,  54;  lui personation  of  tlie  visi- 
ble workings  of  Nature,  23  ;  contrasted 
with  Greek  Paganism,  26;  the  first 
Norse  Thinker,  29  ;  main  practical  Be- 
lief ;  indispensable  to  be  brave,  44  ; 
hearty,  homely,  rugged  Mythology ; 
Balder,  Thor,  48 ;  Consecration  of 
Valour,  57. 

Parliaments  superseded  by  Books,  228 ; 
Cromwell's  Parliaments,  318. 

Past,  tlie  whole,  the  possession  of  the 
Present,  57. 

Poet,  the,  and  Prophet,  110,  141,  156. 

Poetry  and  Prose,  distinction  of,  113, 
125. 

Popery,  191. 

Poverty,  advantages  of,  232. 

Priest,  the  true,  a  kind  of  Prophet,  162. 

Printing,  consequences  of,  228. 

Private  judgment,  173. 

Progress  of  tlie  Species,  166. 

Prose.     See  Poetry. 

Protestantism,  the  root  of  Modem  Euro- 
pean History,  173  ;  not  dead  yet,  192  ; 
its  living  fruit,  200,  277. 

Purgatory,  noble  Catliolic  conception  of, 
135. 

Puritanism,  founded  by  Knox,  200  ;  true 
beginning  of  America,  201  ;  the  one 
epoch  of  Scotland,  202 ;  Theocracy, 
213;  Puritanism  in  England,  283,  286, 
313. 

Quackery  originates  nothing,  5,  61 ;  age 
of,  243 ;  Quacks  and  Dupes,  300. 

Ragnarok,  54. 

Reformer,  the  true,  163. 

Religion,  a  man's,  the  chief  fact  with 
regard  to  him,  2  ;  based  on  Hero-wor- 
ship, 15 ;  propagating  by  the  sword, 
84  ;  cannot  succeed  by  being  '  easy,'  96. 

Revolution,  274;  the  French,  277, 328. 

Richter,  12. 

Right  and  Wrong,  103,  138. 

Rousseau,  not  a  strong  man ;  his  Por- 
trait; egoism,  256;  his  passionate  ap- 
peals, 258 ;  his  Books,  like  himself, 
unhealthy ;  the  Evangelist  of  the 
French  Revolution,  259. 

Scepticism,   a  spiritual    paralysis,  236- 

246,  289. 
Scotland  awakened  into  life  by  Knox, 

202. 
Secret,  the  open,  110. 
Seid,  Mahomet's  slave  and   friend,  80, 

98. 
Shakspeare   and    the  Elizabethan   Era, 

144 ;    his  all-sufiBcing  intellect,   146, 


INDEX 


375 


150;  his  Characters,  148;  his  Dramas, 
a  part  of  Nature  herself,  152;  his  joy- 
ful tranquillity,  and  overflowing  love 
of  laughter,  153 ;  his  hearty  patriot- 
ism, 155 ;  glimpses  of  the  world  that 
was  in  him,  156  ;  a  Heaven-sent  Light- 
bringer,  158;    a  King  of   Saxondom, 

.  160. 

Shekinah,  Man  the  true,  13. 

Silence,  the  great  empire  of,  142,  310. 

Sincerity,  better  than  gracefulness,  42 ; 
the  first  characteristic  of  heroism  and 
originaUty,  62,  75,  176,  178,  217. 

Theocracy,  a,  striven  for  by  all  true  Re- 
formers, 214,  312. 

Thor,  and  his  adventures,  25,  48,  49-53; 
his  last  appearance,  55. 

Thought,  miraculous  influence  of,  29, 
40,  229  ;  musical  Thought,  114. 


Thunder.     See  Thor. 
Time,  the  great  mystery  of,  10. 
Tolerance,  true  and  false,  194,  210. 
Turenne,  lOS. 

Universities,  224. 

Valour,  the  basis  of  all  virtue,  44,  40 ; 

Norse  consecration  of,  57  ;    Christian 

A^alour,  168. 
Voltaire-worship,  19. 

Wish,  the  Norse  god,  25 ;  enlarged  into 

a  heaven  by  Mahomet,  104. 
Worms,  Luther  at,  188. 
Worship,  transcendent  wonder,  15.    See 

Hero-worship. 

Zemzem,  the  sacred  Well,  68. 


LITERATURE   TEXTS 

American  Classics.  With  suggestions  for  study,  etc.  438  pages,  75 
cents,  fiet. 

American  and  English  Classics.  For  Grammar  Grades.  With 
explanatory  notes,  etc.     330  pages.     55  cents,  net. 

American  Poems.     Edited  by  H.  E.  Scudder.     453  pages,  ;^i.oo,  net. 

American  Prose.     Edited  by  H.  E.  Scudder.    414  pages,  j^i.oo,  net. 

Literary  Masterpieces.  With  explanatory  notes,  etc.  433  pages,  80 
cents,  net. 

Masterpieces  of  American  Literature.  Edited  by  H.  E.  Scudder. 
With  explanatory  notes,  etc.     504  pages,  ^i.oo,  net. 

Masterpieces  of  British  Literature.  Edited  by  H.  E.  Scudder. 
With  explanatory  notes,  etc.     480  pages,  $1.00,  net. 

An  American  Anthology.  Edited  by  E.  C.  Stedman.  878  pages. 
Stttdetifs  Edition.     $2.00,  net. 

A  Victorian  Anthology.  Edited  by  E.  C.  Stedman.  744  pages. 
Student's  Edition.     1^1.75,  net. 

The  Chief  American  Poets.  Edited  by  C.  H.  Page,  Professor  of 
English  Literature  in  Northwestern  University.     713  pages,  51.75.  net. 

Selections  from  the  Riverside  Literature  Series.  For  Seventh 
Grade  Reading.  With  explanatory  notes.    256  pages.  40  cents,  net. 

Selections  from  the  Riverside  Literature  Series.  For  Eighth 
Grade  Reading.  With  explanatory  notes.  256  pages.   40  cents,  net. 

Riverside  Literature  Series.  223  volumes,  with  introductions,  notes, 
biographical  sketches,  and  illustrations.  170  volumes  list  at  15  cents, 
paper,  or  25  cents,  cloth,  net. 

Modern  Classics.  34  volumes,  pocket  size,  without  notes.  The  uniform 
price  is  40  cents,  net. 

Rolfe's  Students'  Series,  11  volumes  of  poems  by  Scott,  Tennyson, 
Byron  and  Morris.  Edited  by  W.  J.  Roi.fe.  Price  to  teachers,  53 
cents,  each,  net. 


Send  for  descriptive  circulars 


HOUGHTON    MIFFLIN    COMPANY 

BOSTON  NEW  YORK  CHICAGO 

S13 


THE 
RIVERSIDE  BIOGRAPHICAL  SERIES 

The  condensation  demanded  by  a  school  history  gives 
little  room  for  specific  treatment  of  great  historical  char^ 
acters.  This  series  is  designed  to  supply  the  personal 
note  in  history.  It  takes  up  in  succession  men  who  have 
been  prominent  in  discovery  and  in  the  development  of 
American  civilization.  Colonizers,  statesmen,  explorers, 
sailors,  inventors,  men  of  letters,  captains  of  industry, 
philanthropists  —  all  these  representatives  of  American 
activity  are  tp  be  found  on  the  list.  The  volumes  are  from 
125  to  150  pages  in  length,  and  the  aim  of  the  writers  is 
not  only  to  give  agreeable  personal  sketches,  but  also  to 
present  with  graphic  force  the  character  and  achievement 
of  the  men  delineated  ;  to  intimate  something  of  the  con- 
tribution which  each  has  made  to  the  development  of  the 
country,  and  where  possible  the  influence  of  the  cmntoy 
in  the  formation  of  their  characters. 

I.  ANDREW  JACKSON,  by  W.  G.  Brown. 

a.  JAMES  B.  EADS,  by  Louis  How. 

3.  BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN,  by  Paul  E.  More. 

4.  PETER  COOPER,  by  R.  W.  Raymond. 

5.  THOMAS   JEFFERSON,  by  H.  C.  Merwin. 

6.  WILLIAM  PENN,  by  George  Hodges. 

7.  ULYSSES  S.  GRANT,  by  Walter  Allen. 

8.  LEWIS  AND  CLARK,  by  William  R.  Lighton. 
g..  JOHN  MARSHALL,  by  James  B.  Thayer. 

10.  ALEXANDER  HAMILTON,  by  Charles  A.  CoNANT, 

11.  WASHINGTON  IRVING,  by  Henry  W.  Boynton. 

12.  PAUL  JONES,  by  Hutchins  Hapgood. 

13.  STEPHEN  A.  DOUGLAS,  by  W.  G.  Brown. 

14.  SAMUEL  DE  CHAMPLAIN,  by  H.  D.  Sedgwick,  Jr. 
School  Edition,  with  portrait,  each,  50  cents,  net,  postpaid. 

Descriptive  circulars  will  be  sent  upon  application. 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

4  Pakk  Si.,  Boston;  S5   Fifth  Avf.,   New  Vokk 
37S-3S8  Wabash  Ave.,  Chicago 


